


Storage Containers

by violentlypan



Category: Daredevil (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Badly, Banter, Canon-Typical Violence, Clint Barton Needs a Hug, Deaf Clint Barton, Discussion of Mental Health, Dumpster buddies, Hostage Situations, How Do I Tag, Human Disaster Clint Barton, Human Disaster Matt Murdock, M/M, Matt Murdock Needs a Hug, Matt is trying, Mental Health Issues, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Profanity, Slow Burn, They deserve a happy ending, and more content, and trying to flirt, author can't write romance lol, clint barton cant flirt, just guys being dudes, kind of, kind of whump?, never mind this is definitely whump, theyre trying their best
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-09
Updated: 2019-04-27
Packaged: 2019-11-14 14:18:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 24,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18054110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/violentlypan/pseuds/violentlypan
Summary: Daredevil and Hawkeye meet on a stakeout.Well, okay, it's not really a stakeout anymore when there's fighting actively happening.And, well, it's not really fighting actively happening if they're both stuck in a big cargo crate, is it?(AKA: Matt and Clint are blithering idiots and need like 12 doctors apiece.)





	1. Matt- Chapter 1

They met in a warehouse.

 

The Devil was staking the place out. It had been some kind of mafia stronghold for over a month now- he wasn’t sure what family- and he’d been meaning to clean the place out. An easy enough quest- two men guarding a crate, a few wandering around and patrolling, a couple of guys telling a truly horrifying joke that he almost crossed himself just for hearing.  _ What’s in the crate? _

 

He focused on the large thing- it wasn’t a crate, but a much bigger object, hollow- a storage container, probably, the kind loaded onto cargo ships- and there was a heartbeat inside.

 

_ The Black Sky? _

 

No- this person had the scent of… pizza. And hazelnuts, and dog fur, and sweat. He could taste the blood off his knuckles and face and arms. He’d tried to fight back, and he was hurt. His breathing was labored.

 

And dammit, if Daredevil was gonna let the guy suffer alone, his name wasn’t Matthew Michael Murdock. So, of course, he leaped into the fray, onto one of the patrolling men- he let out an undignified and surprised screech as the Devil hit him. He fought the rest of them off- easy, really- until he got to the cargo crate, and someone had already hit the alarm.

 

The blaring alarm threw his senses off- he couldn’t hear their heartbeats, feel the vibrations of their footsteps through the already-vibrating floor. There were rough hands on his shoulders, and Daredevil lashed out, his elbow connecting with someone’s stomach (arm? neck?) and feeling the soft  _ oof! _ he let out as he fell back. But then someone’s foot was shoving him forward, and he was flying through the air. 

 

The container doors shut behind him as he hit the rough metal with a clang and a dive roll, landing squarely on someone’s leg. The someone let out an undignified squawk of pain, and the Devil hastily sat up, trying to get off his leg but also not-so-subtly crashing into the man a couple more times to get a sense of what he looked like. He could hear muscled arms rippling; the man’s legs and ribs were  _ definitely  _ broken, and the Devil was pretty sure his own ankle was twisted. 

 

Matt struggled to his feet. “Sorry-” he gasped, then took another second to catch his breath. 

 

“Nice of you to drop by,” the man in the container commented idly. Copper scented his words, and a weird whirring was coming from his ears.

 

“You’re hurt,” Matthew said. “Your leg n’ ribs are broken, and you’ve got a bloody nose. You need a  _ doctor. _ Honestly? I’m surprised you’re still up and talking. And that you haven’t turned the comms in your ears on yet. And you’re still making sardonic comments?”

 

“Wow, gee, no shit, Doctor Sherlock. First off, they aren’t  _ comms- _ they’re hearing aids. Second, how the hell’d you figure all that shit out? I can’t see squat, but I can sure feel these bruised ribs. Who the hell are you?”

 

Daredevil chose to ignore the question. He tapped at the walls, trying to find a place he could break through and out into the open; he winced every time he stepped on his left foot.

 

“Look, who  _ are  _ you and what do you mean to Tony Stark?”   
  


That got his attention.

 

“Tony Stark? What’s he have to do with this?”

 

“Well, every time I get kidnapped, it tends to be to get him to pay ransom. Name’s Hawkeye, by the way.”

 

“I know,” Daredevil said shortly, continuing his hobbling route around the container. And it was true- the arms would have given it away if the strong heartbeat and pain tolerance hadn’t. “There are three standing outside, twelve on the floor. More on the way. You can fight?” 

 

“I- you’re talking to a fucking Avenger, and asking if I can fight!?” He sounded indignant, as though he got underestimated a lot. “Can  _ you  _ fight? I don’t even know who the fuck you are?”

 

“I can fight,” Daredevil said.

 

“How the fuck do you see in here? Can you like, read minds?”   
  


“Is that what the Bulletin’s saying about me now?” He tapped a corner with his billy club. “Hawkeye, you don’t have super strength?”

 

“No,” he replied, and Daredevil dropped the billy club and kept moving. “No fancy superpowers, just a helluva good shot.”

 

“And your hearing aids? How deaf are you- do you need them, or can you ditch them and make a bomb out of them?”

 

“Near-totally deaf. Got a problem with it?”

 

“I’m not  _ ableist _ , Hawkeye, just curious as to our resources.”

 

“You sound like a friggin survivalist.”

 

“Huh. Got a good ring to it. Never gonna stick, though. You in any shape to fight? How’s that leg?”

 

“Same as it was 10 minutes ago.” He tapped it twice, and Daredevil could  _ hear _ him stiffen at the pain. The Devil ignored his own bleeding cheek and temple-  _ when’d that happen? _ \- and crouched by the archer’s broken leg. “What’re you gonna do, set it in pitch black?”

 

“That, uh, was the plan,” Daredevil said, cracking a smile that he knew Hawkeye couldn’t see. “Bite this.” He pulled back the suit, confident in the darkness, and took his tie out from his suit, handing it to Hawkeye. Then, without much ado at all, he took the leg briskly in both hands and snapped it back into place, using his billy club to make a splint using the cord to tie it together.

 

_ “Fuck!” _ Hawkeye hissed, dropping the tie. His heart rate leaped, and Daredevil let the archer squeeze his wrist tightly as it slowed.

 

“You going to be okay?”

 

“Yeah, I just- fuck, dude. that  _ hurt. _ ”

 

“I get that,” Daredevil said, standing stiffly. He tapped against one wall. “I found a structural weakness, but your nose n’ribs are still broken, and there’s no way your leg’s not swelling.” He picked up the tie and tucked it into the neck of his suit- it reeked of hazelnuts and chocolate, and he honestly didn’t mind the smell. 

 

“I can fight, sure,” Hawkeye sighed, and the Devil heard him lean back onto his hands, the shifting of weight under him. “But, if you’re who I think you are, we may not need to.”

 

“Oh? Who do you think I am?” Daredevil grinned- it was exciting to be recognized. “And why’s that gonna help us?”

 

“If you  _ are  _ the Daredevil, as I think you are, then it’s the, uh…” Hawkeye’s heart rate sped up again, and the Devil cocked his head.

 

“You’re right. But tell me you  _ didn’t _ .” 

 

“We had to,” Hawkeye apologized. “Gotta keep tabs on the vigilantes of NYC. And, well…”

 

“Where’s the tracker?”

 

“Your club.” He gently ran a finger over the splint- Daredevil could hear the calloused pads of his thumb on the metal. “There’s a tiny disc we implanted, courtesy of-”

 

“Spiderman,” Daredevil groaned. “The little  _ backstabber. _ ”

 

“In my defense, I didn’t want to do it.” And he really had to bite back an angry rebuke at this one-  _ fuck’s sake. _

 

“Look, as long as they know where  _ you _ are, they’ll come after you soon. They know I was on a mission in Hell’s Kitchen.”

 

“Trying to take this place down?”

 

“A business partner,” Hawkeye said, then, as his stomach growled, “Aw, hungry, no.” Daredevil fished into the pocket he kept his club in, emerging with several granola bars.

 

“Emergency rations for my fast-metabolism friends,” he explained, wrinkling the wrappers and then passing one to Hawkeye.

 

“Ugh, thanks, Double D, you’re the  _ best. _ ” 

 

“We’re not out of here yet,” he reminded him. “No need to celebrate over a little food.” He stashed the rest of them back in the pouch. Then he paused- a conversation was happening outside, and he listened intently. “They’re planning on ransoming us to Stark. Couple of superheroes, I guess. Wait- no-” 

  
Daredevil didn’t need his super-senses to tell he had paled. He walked back over to the archer.

 

“We need to get out of here. I don’t care how easy it would be to just wait for an Avengers pickup.”

 

“What’s up?”   
  


Daredevil swallowed. “They- one of them has a, uh, grudge against me- I kicked him into a Dumpster, I think- but he… he wants to unmask me.”   
  


Hawkeye scoffed. “Yeah, but there are literally millions of New Yorkers. You could be  _ anyone _ , assuming you’re no big-shot whose name is in the paper every other week like, I don’t know, that doctor down in Midtown who keeps saving people miraculously.”

 

“Yeah. Uh, except my work is almost entirely in the public eye. I’m- I’m a lawyer, and my law firm has…  _ taken flight  _ in the past few years.”

 

Hawkeye groaned. “Okay. So we gotta get you out, at the very least. I have a knife on me, do you-?”   
  


“Nothing,” Daredevil confirmed. “No weapons, other than the billy club holding your leg in one piece.”

  
  


“It’s  _ suicide, _ Daredevil. There’s  _ literally  _ no way we’d end up alive after it.”

 

“Yeah, and what am I supposed to do? Wait for-”  _ Thump, thump. _ The sound of footsteps coming closer.

 

“They’re here,” he hissed, pulling the archer into a back corner. Hawkeye froze- not a second later, the door was opening and Daredevil was punching whoever it was out, then scrambling through the door. He heard heartbeats at all sides, but the one who reacted first- a loud  _ click- _ was the one he slid at, his foot connecting with the enemy’s knee. He scrambled to his feet, delivering a roundhouse kick to the man’s head- a loud  _ thump _ and an exhale indicated he was unconscious. He heard Hawkeye behind him, the sharp sound of metal cutting through the air.

 

“Let’s try to avoid killing them,  _ please, _ ” he grunted, ramming his elbow into another’s stomach and knocking him down. He whirled at the sound of rapid footsteps and ducked, leaping for the man’s legs and sweeping him to the ground as he heard gunfire ring out from behind him. Hawkeye grunted, and the Devil inhaled as he smelled copper from the man’s shoulder. 

 

“Hawkeye-” he started, then hit another man hard across the face. “-I can do this, just-” Broke the guy’s arm and got him to drop the gun, removed the bullets, kept moving. “-get out of here, your arm-”

 

The continued sound of the knife told him that Hawkeye hadn’t heeded his advice, and then it changed- the knife slid against cloth- probably being sheathed again- and the distinct sound of a bowstring resounded around the room instead. He vaguely wondered, as he punched another person, how Hawkeye was still  _ standing _ and  _ shooting.  _

 

“Cover your eyes!” Hawkeye said, his voice tight and strained with pain. A twang of a bowstring, and then he realized everyone else had dropped to the ground. He could  _ hear  _ the adrenaline running through Hawkeye’s veins now as he sheathed his bow and limped over to Daredevil. One of his hearing aids were out, and his leg had come unwrapped from the billy club; he was holding it in one hand, and passed it to Daredevil. His shoulder was definitely bleeding profusely.

 

“Helluva show,” he said, then collapsed.

 

\-------

 

The trip back to his apartment was quiet. Daredevil couldn’t use his usual parkour method of reaching places, so instead, he had to hobble through the alleys, carrying a half-dead Avenger in his arms. Rats scuttled at his feet, and he winced- his only bandage was a ripped piece of Hawkeye’s shirt, staunching the wound, but he could still hear steady drops of blood against the pavement. Two more blocks. He could make it two more blocks.

 

The window creaked as it opened and the Devil slid through, carefully depositing the hurt archer on his couch- he heard it  _ creak  _ under the weight of the man. He went about stopping the blood, first; then turned his attention to the broken ribs and leg, plus the however-many lacerations dotting Hawkeye’s stomach, arms, and legs. Then he sat down in his chair, hissing as he washed, sterilized, and wrapped his own wounds. It would be a hell of an explanation to any clients the next day. Speaking of…

 

Matt ran two fingers over his watch- 3:22 AM. He should really go to sleep if he wanted to be functional the next day. So he removed his suit, put a pair of pajamas on instead- the tags reading  _ Columbia sweater  _ and  _ red sweatpants- _ and collapsed into the seat next to Hawkeye.

 

Sleep was a long time in coming, even with the soft, shallow breaths of the unconscious man next to him. 

 

\-------

 

When Matt woke back up, Hawkeye was still out, and he panicked a little. Out of reflex, he went to the kitchen and baked a quiche, then redressed his wounds.

 

Hawkeye’s breaths picked up.

 

He turned quickly around to find that he could feel the man’s stare- then, in the next instant, Hawkeye had a knife to his throat with his good arm. “Don’t move.”

 

“Wasn’t planning to,” Murdock sighed. “I have no bad intent, I promise.”

 

“You’re blind,” Hawkeye said. It wasn’t a question. “Who are you?”   
  


“The name’s Matthew Murdock,” he said reluctantly. “You can, uh, call me Matt.”

 

“What happened to Daredevil?” he asked- Matt felt him almost retract the knife, but it stayed resolutely in place. 

 

“He left,” Matt lied easily. “We know each other well. He trusted me to patch you up.”

 

The knife pressed harder against his neck, and Matt felt a twinge of cold fear match the drop of hot blood that traced its way along his collarbone. “Try again.”

 

“I didn’t hurt him, I promise.”

 

“Something’s missing.” Damn, this guy is good. “Where’d he go?”

 

“He’s standing right in front of you.”   
  


Hawkeye retracted his hand. “You’re blind.”

 

“Why is that everyone’s first reaction?” Matt sighed, rubbing his throat and wiping the blood from it. “Just because I’m blind doesn’t mean I can’t kick criminals around. You’re  _ deaf  _ and you’re an Avenger.” 

 

“I can fix that with hearing aids.”

  
“And I make up for mine with  _ other  _ senses. I can taste the pizza on your lips, for instance- that and Nutella is all you’ve eaten for four days.”

 

“Anyone can taste that if they kiss me,” Hawkeye said flippantly.

 

“Well, last I checked, I haven’t done that. Either way, you might have noticed I’m doing  _ just fine _ as Daredevil. Blind or not.”

 

“I have it on good authority that that ankle is twisted, and your face is pretty obviously bruised and scraped up. That doesn’t sound like ‘fine’ to me.” 

 

“Hypocrite.” Matt wasn’t angry, really- just annoyed. He just saved this guy’s life, and he was arguing with him? “You’re doing worse than me and you’re an  _ Avenger. _ ”

 

“It’ll heal.” 

 

Matt snorted and walked into the kitchen where he could smell the latest batch of muffins in the oven. “So will mine. Why are you so worried about this? I’m  _ fine. _ ” He opened the oven with a  _ clang, _ put the oven mitts on- they smelled of heat and flour- and pulled the muffins out. If he set them down with a louder sound than was strictly necessary, nobody brought it up.

 

Clint sat down at the table- he could hear a deep sigh, and the shift of clothing that told him he had set his head in his hands. “I... “ He paused, and his heartbeat spiked. “I don’t know.” 

 

Matthew didn’t mention the lie. Just picked up his burner phone and passed it to Hawkeye.

 

“Put your number in here. If I need help, I’ll call you. Will that help?”

 

There was no response, but he could hear the beeping of numbers on the phone, so he counted it as a success.

 

Then, footsteps walking away- a window opening- a person climbing through.

 

And Matt sat down on the couch, shaky-legged all of a sudden.

 

“Jesus Christ,” he said aloud, “I just met an Avenger.”

 

And then he picked up the phone and called Foggy.


	2. Clint- Chapter 1

Okay, so Clint was _mildly_ screwed.

 

He had been on a mission- really, he had! Okay, so it was his _own_ mission, one he’d made for himself, but that was no less of a mission than one Cap or Fury gave him. The place he’d been staking out had been literally the sketchiest place on the block, and dammit, Clint was bored. So he was just gonna poke his head in, fight the dudes, figure out why their building was so sketchy, and leave.

 

And then, okay, he hadn’t _meant_ to be captured, okay? He just kind of… got captured. It happened all the time, and honestly? He was just tired enough to wait this one out. He was thrown into the cargo crate pretty roughly, and that wasn’t doing any favors for the leg someone whipped with a gun.  Plus, he wasn’t doing the whole breathing thing very well, and Sam would _kill_ him if he impaled one of his lungs with a broken rib again. Also, there was a _large_ amount of blood dripping down his face from his nose, and it was dark, and he was scared of the dark just enough to stay put.

 

Plus, Tony would find him, anyway. He’d hear the sounds of distant blasting repulsors, muffled by the walls of the storage container, and then Tony would come inside, and whoa, speak of the devil. He could already hear people dropping like flies outside. The door opened, and Clint waited expectantly for Nat or Tony or Steve to waltz in-

 

And then some asshole jumped on his leg, the door shutting behind him and Clint thought to himself, _Does that dude have horns?_ Because when he was getting up, he was being pretty touchy-feely, and he’d almost impaled Clint in the chin with one of them. Also, _ow,_ Jesus Christ, if his leg wasn’t broken before it was sure as hell broken now.

 

“Sorry,” the dude apologized. Clint nodded- nice. At least the guy hadn’t meant to jump on him.

 

“Nice of you to drop in,” he said, because dammit he wasn’t gonna let someone who extra-super-broke his leg be nice to him. And then he diagnosed Clint in, like, five seconds. Which was really fucking weird.

 

The guy recognized him- he wasn’t sure how, considering he wasn’t in the limelight a lot- and still asked him _if he could fucking fight._

 

And then, five minutes later, as the man was setting his leg, he remembered where he’d heard that voice before- a tangle with Doctor Doom, one of New York’s many vigilantes who thought he could handle the issue. Called himself Daredevil. Probably made NYC’s top 5 vigilantes list with his fighting style. Was a little surprising- Daredevil, a lawyer? Bit unorthodox, but he knew a dude who ran a tech company and also was a superhero. Whatever.

 

And then Daredevil had broken the door down, and jumped through, and was fighting people, and if Clint was analyzing his fight style while not-so-subtly checking out his ass, he wasn’t going to tell anyone. Except, you know, he wasn’t paying attention very much to the fighting, and somehow didn’t realize that someone was about to shoot at him until it was much too late.

 

He couldn’t do much after that, because if he thought his leg hurt, his shoulder hurt infinitely more. So he flung a light arrow- didn’t even shoot it, just _threw_ it at someone- and collapsed into Daredevil’s arms.

 

\-------

 

And then he was waking up on someone’s couch, and a _very_ hot, shirtless, scarred man was baking something, and it smelled great. But, also, he wasn’t someone who took things at face value much anymore- not after Natasha- so that’s how he ended up pinning some random hot guy to the wall with a knife to his neck, the angle carefully calculated so it would be obviously present but not hurt him. His shoulder was twinging in pain, but he ignored it pointedly.

 

Any other situation, he’d crack a joke. But this really wasn’t the time. Instead, he said in the harshest growl he could muster, “Don’t move.”

 

“Wasn’t planning to,” the man sighed, leaning back into the wall. Clint kept the knife at his throat, his gaze roaming down to the prolific number of scars along his torso before meeting the man’s eyes again. But there was something wrong- they were clouded and wouldn’t quite meet his, instead gazing ahead dully as though the man couldn’t… couldn’t see him.

 

“You’re blind,” he said, without really meaning to. “Who are you?”

 

“The name’s Matthew Murdock. You can, uh, call me Matt.” The name rang a bell- something to do with the Fisk takedown a few months prior. He cast his eyes around the room- the diploma hanging on the wall from Columbia reminded him that Murdock was the defense attorney that ultimately took him down. Impressive. One of Daredevil’s associates, maybe?

 

“What happened to Daredevil?” He almost lowered it- the man had been honest, after all, but then he thought better of it as he glanced down at Murdock’s bruised and torn knuckles.

 

“He left. We know each other well. He trusted me to patch you up.” Clint didn’t need Natasha’s help figuring out that _this_ one was a lie. Daredevil would never trust anyone to stitch someone else up, if his minimal research into the vigilante had proved right. Or trust anyone, really, in general.

 

Clint tilted the knife, watching the cold metal bite into the skin gently, millimeters away from the jugular- watched the single drop of blood trace its way down his collarbone, leaving a jagged red trail in its wake. “Try again,” he said. The man’s face tightened a little bit, revealing another scar at the edge of his lip and over his temple.

 

“I didn’t hurt him.” Wow, helluva vague answer. Clint considered pushing the knife a little deeper, then reconsidered. Matt was a lawyer, so he was in the public eye; if he was a good person trying to keep Daredevil’s secret, he wouldn’t want to leave the man with another scar.

 

Instead, he asked for more. “Something’s missing. Where’d he go?”

 

“He’s standing right in front of you.”

 

Clint stepped back, dropped the knife to his side. For a second, he was stunned in disbelief- everything the man said sounded like the truth. And it explained the scars- the large, tangled one on his hip that looked as though he’d been run over by a chainsaw, the matching ones over each pectoral that either came from a mislocated top surgery or from some type of enemy (he was willing to bet on the latter,) the ones littering his shoulders and forearms from too many blocked knife slashes.

 

One thing didn’t match. “You’re blind.”

 

“Why is that everyone’s first reaction?” He ran a finger along his throat as though trying to wipe the blood off, but just ended up smearing it over his Adam’s apple. “Just because I’m blind doesn’t mean I can’t kick criminals around. You’re deaf and you’re an Avenger.”

 

He did have a good point. “I can fix that with hearing aids.” And he wasn’t even sure Murdock was telling the truth about being blind- Daredevil was so quick and deliberate with his movements Barton didn’t know whether to trust his instincts or his eyes. He didn’t think he’d ever even seen Daredevil trip, and the way Murdock walked around his apartment like he could even see things that had moved…

 

“And I can make up for mine with other senses,” Murdock explained. It did make sense, but Clint still wasn’t sure he was telling the truth until he added, “I can taste the pizza on your lips, for instance- that and Nutella is all you’ve eaten for four days.” Okay, _that_ was unfair, because dammit, pizza tasted good. He didn’t actually like Nutella, either- it was Tony’s, and he was getting back at Tony for putting confetti in his explosive arrows instead of actual explosives, which was a) thoroughly messy and b) thoroughly unhelpful, especially when he actually needed said explosive arrows.

 

“Anyone can taste that if they kiss me.” _Please kiss me,_ he added silently, because dammit, Daredevil was smoking hot. And probably straight- or repressed- if the rosary hanging around the lamp was to be trusted. But hey, he was Hawkeye, which meant he had to shoot his shot.

 

“Well, last I checked, I haven’t done that.” _Damn. Shot down._ Or just ignored- Clint couldn’t tell. “Either way, you might have noticed that I’m doing just fine as Daredevil. Blind or not.” Clint cast his eyes down at Murdock’s feet, where one ankle was wrapped in an ace bandage. He was subtly keeping weight off it, matching Clint’s own posture.

 

“I have it on good authority that your ankle is twisted, and-” He looked back up at his face, where butterfly bandages adorned his forehead and cheekbone, plus a big black bruise over a puffy and swollen eye. “-your face is pretty obviously bruised and scraped up. That doesn’t sound like ‘fine’ to me.”

 

“Hypocrite,” Murdock said, adding a little _tch_ sound in the back of his mouth. “You’re doing worse than me and you’re an Avenger.”

 

“It’ll heal,” he defended, subconsciously rolling his shoulder back a little to test the pain levels. Answer: pain levels _high._ Really fucking high.

 

Matt didn’t dignify him with an answer. Instead, he walked back to the oven, with the grace of the frigging Black Widow in his silent steps even with his twisted ankle. “So will mine. Why are you so worried about this?” He loudly took some muffins out of the oven, every inch of his body screaming _irritation_ (with a healthy dose of _please be my boyfriend.)_ Clint sat down at the table and massaged the bridge of his nose with his fingers.

 

“I…” _Because you’re smart and kind and funny, and I can tell that just from talking to you last night, and you stitched me up without complaining and you’re frigging gorgeous and I don’t want to lose you too,_ he wanted to say.   


Instead, he said, “I don’t know.”

 

He sat for another second, until he looked up and saw an ancient flip phone in front of him. It was black and dusty and probably as durable as a fucking Nokia. He took it from Matt’s bruised fingers gingerly, flipping it open. It lit up. _Daqeddvik,_ the name on the inside said, and Clint stared for a second before realizing that he hadn’t spelled “daredevil” right. Of course- a blind person trying to use an old phone’s keyboard without a screen reader.

 

“Put your number in here,” Matt said, indicating the phone with a flick of his hand. “If I need help, I’ll call you. Will that help?”

 

Clint was about to make a snarky comeback about giving him his number. Then he glanced back at the rosary and bit it back. He programmed in his personal number- it took him a moment with only one hand. Logged it under _Hawkeye_ and handed it back.

 

Then, he waved goodbye with his good arm and hopped out the window, wandering back through the early-morning streets of Hell’s Kitchen.

 

“So, not super powerful vision, then,” Clint said aloud, turning the puzzle that was Matthew Murdock over and over in his mind as he walked.

 

And then he tripped over his own boots, and was back to bleeding everywhere.

 

He dialed Tony when he was four blocks away. “Hey, requesting pickup from Hell’s Kitchen. Uh, preferably inconspicuous and… gunshot-wound-friendly?”

 

_“Dammit, Barton.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tag yourself I'm Clint going "did you just ask me if i, an Avenger, could fight"


	3. Matt- Chapter 2

 

Matt fully expected to never see- or, hear, whatever- Hawkeye again. Their paths didn’t cross often, and they had avoided each other as much as possible prior to the unfortunate storage container incident. He didn’t want to deal with an Avenger-style issue, and knowing them, Captain America was probably going to arrest him for working outside the law or something. 

 

But the heartbeat thumping in the dumpster was unavoidable. He listened-  the heartbeat was familiar, but he didn’t remember who it belonged to.

 

“Seems we meet again,” Daredevil said, leaping down to the Dumpster. It rattled under him, but did not fall. A groan came from inside.

 

“Daredev’l,” the person inside said, heart rate speeding up. “Y’re… D’redev’l?” He recognized the slurred voice, tight with pain- it belonged to one Hawkeye. Daredevil’s heart-  _ Matt’s  _ heart- skipped a beat, but he didn’t bother considering what that meant. 

 

“At your service. You’re in a Dumpster, by the way, did you know that?” Something felt off. Something different about the archer, other than the change in deodorant and, you know, the fact that he was in a dumpster.

 

“Sorry, can you- can you face me real quick?” This clued the Devil into what he was missing- the buzz of electronics by his ears. His hearing aids-

 

“Your hearing aids. Where’d you lose them?” 

 

“N’tt sure,” he groaned, and Daredevil paused. He scented the air for a second, almost gagging on the scent and taste of garbage. Behind that, the smell of pizza, of resin and… blood.

 

“You’re hurt. We have to get you out of there.” How did Daredevil not hear this happening? He could have avoided this altogether. There was a  _ lot  _ of blood.   
  


“C’n survive. ‘S only three shots. Din’ hit an’thin bad.”

 

“Yeah, no.” He reached into the Dumpster-  _ ew ew ew-  _ and grabbed Hawkeye’s phone, putting pressure on his shot leg with the other hand. The man made a little noise of protest at the theft of his phone, then a yelp of pain at the second. Daredevil ignored both.

 

He flipped the phone open and tapped the first number on the phone’s list, mentally thanking God that it wasn’t one of those fancy Stark-phones that he’d never be able to read. It dialed once… twice… three times. Cut off. Quietly, he muttered, “Damn.” Then he went to the second option on the list and dialed that one.

 

It rang once, then crackled with static- someone had picked up.

 

“Clint, where are you?” The concerned voice of… someone filled one ear. “Don’t tell me you’re off taking an unscheduled vacation again.” He filed away Clint’s real name for future reference.

 

“It’s Daredevil,” he said in his deeper, fake-gravelly tone. “Hawkeye is-”

 

“I’m tracing the call already, asshole. We’ll get him out.” The voice was familiar, and it reminded him of something. He thought of so many news podcasts overheard, so much gossip at Josie’s and the alien invasion of 2012 in New York. Tony Stark, a.k.a. Iron Man.

 

“He’s been shot three times. I don’t think I can- I can’t patch him up.”   
  


“You.” The voice sounded confused now. “You didn’t kidnap him?” 

 

“No, but he doesn’t have- he lost his hearing aids.” He glanced down at Clint, who had closed his eyes. His heartbeat was still going, though- he couldn’t hear the adrenaline pumping anymore, so he assumed he was just in more pain and needed to stay still. 

 

“That’s definitely not the most important thing in this situation. You know ASL?” Tony asked.

 

“No. Never learned.” Not that it was of much use to a blind man. He could sense the movement of fingers in front of him when someone used it, but he couldn’t really see the specific movement of each finger and it confused him. He tried, but he gave up two weeks in.

 

“Joy,” Stark sighed into the phone. “Okay. Stay put and put pressure on his wounds. Tell him- make sure your mouth is really visible to him-  _ Tony says that you’re an idiot and to stay the hell there and let Sam show up and not kill him on the spot.” _

 

The phone line went dead, and the Devil glanced over. Hawkeye’s erratic breathing had evened out- he was unconscious. Again. They  _ had  _ to stop meeting like this.

 

Daredevil considered for a second, then he slipped the phone back into Clint’s front pocket and resumed putting pressure on the wound. His heart rate picked back up.

 

“Sit down,” Daredevil hissed, making sure his mouth was visible, before Clint could even sit up. “You’re just gonna jar your leg which still has three slugs in it.”

 

“P’nish’r?” Clint wheezed, the hint of amusement in his tone enough to let the Devil know he was joking. Daredevil snorted, shook his head, and kept leaning on the wound. Hawkeye hissed in pain. “Nah, Pun’sher would be m’re mers’ful.”

 

“I’m trying to  _ keep  _ you  _ alive _ ,” Daredevil grumbled. “Stark told me to tell you to stay the hell down and let Sam show up. Who shot you?” 

 

“Dunno. Fuuuuck, he’s send’n  _ Sam, _ ” Clint whined. “Cn’t you patch m’up instead?”   
  


“You may have noticed that I’m not exactly a medical professional.”   
  


“Did a des’n job last time.”

 

“I almost got you killed last time because I thought my stupid secret identity was more important than your health and safety.”

 

“Eh,” he shrugged. “‘M no’ rich, wha’ gives you that ‘dea?”   
  


Before Daredevil could ask what the hell he meant by that, he heard a heartbeat making its steady way down the alley towards them, and he straightened up, careful to keep up his pressure on Clint’s leg.

 

“Sam, I take it.”   
  


“The Devil of Hell’s Kitchen. Wow, that’s a fucking mouthful and a half. Can I just call you, like, Satan?” He was carrying a kit that smelt of isopropyl and sounded lots of mechanical whirring. 

Daredevil paused for about four seconds, trying to judge how much serious-ness was in Sam’s tone. “I’m not an actual- whatever. He’s all yours.” He took his now  _ very  _ bloody gloves off of the wound and made to leave.   
  


“You gonna stick around and help?”

 

Daredevil paused, then cocked his head. The neighborhood was nearly silent, for once- two people were conducting a drug sale four blocks down, but it wasn’t that big a deal and it was almost in Midtown anyway. Not his problem, really- he could let someone else take care of it.

 

“Sure,” he said, turning back around to face the vague area he knew Sam was in. “What do you need me to do?”

 

\-------

 

As it turns out, Daredevil was  _ very  _ unhelpful.

 

Sam’s entire medkit was basically one massive unfolding operation table, and what he needed help with was unfolding it while trying to help a squirmy and unhappy Clint. Sam must have frustratedly said, “No, the  _ other  _ lever! It’s even  _ labeled!  _ Are you illiterate?! I thought you were supposed to have super-vision!” 12 times before Matt was Royally Annoyed.

 

“Look- it’s really dark out, okay?” Which wasn’t technically a lie. “This is the worst- the  _ worst-  _ job you could have asked me to do. I can do any other job. I can’t- machines and I don’t mix.” 

 

“Okay, fine, can  _ you  _ make sure he doesn’t bleed all over everywhere?”   
  


Daredevil just shook his head exasperatedly and walked over to Clint, who had a tourniquet wrapped halfway around his leg. Sam took his place by the machine, and Daredevil consciously blocked out the sounds of the whirring table opening in favor of tying the tourniquet tightly around Clint’s leg.

 

“Okay, amputee, let’s go,” Sam sighed, gently lifting him from the Dumpster- Clint whined in protest and Daredevil stood back, unsure how best to help. “Do you want your spare hearing aids or not?”

 

“Yeah, fine,” Clint said, and Daredevil could  _ hear  _ him breathing through the pain. Something else sounded wrong, too, not just the bullet wounds in him. He approached him gingerly, slid a glove off, and tested the skin near the wound.

 

“Your hands aren’t clean,” Sam protested, but Daredevil had already figured it out. 

 

“His skin isn’t cooling down near the wound. It’s staying… 2 degrees warmer, that’s hotter than it should be.” He moved his fingers carefully down Clint’s leg. “It’s the same at the other locations.”

 

“Shit,” Sam said. “What does that mean?”   
  


“Hang on, can you turn that light off?” A pause, then the louder flow of electricity cut off. Matt listened intently, but the buzz of Clint’s hearing aids was cutting through it. “And- and your hearing aids, sorry. Distractions.” The second thing cut off, but there was still a faint hum of electricity, and the clicking of small gears- maybe a motor, or a CPU.

 

“Those aren’t bullets. They’re something else- something’s moving inside them, and there’s… some sort of electricity. Being left behind, like a trail of sparks.” He was thinking aloud at this point. Sam sighed and passed him a pair of latex gloves.

 

“Are th’ bullets moving?” Hawkeye asked. His hearing aids were back on, but Daredevil had identified what he was looking for now, so he could tune out the buzz of electricity that they emitted.

 

“No,” Daredevil said. Then, he listened closer, and snapped his fingers once.

 

The buzz increased, just a little bit, while he snapped his fingers. And then it went silent.

 

“They shot you with a listening bug,” he said. “Three listening bugs. They’ve left traces of, uh- electrically charged metal all along the bullet wound.”   
  


“Change of plans,” Sam said. “Clint, take your ears out. Daredevil, you got any tech in that suit?”

 

“A burner phone,” he replied. “That’s it.”   
  


“No wings? Okay, you’re gonna have to give me a hand. We’re getting Clint onto a stretcher and going to the Tower.” He could sense, vaguely, Sam leaning over to yell at Clint’s leg, and anywhere else it would have been funny but here it was probably in bad taste to laugh. 

 

He helped Sam carry Clint onto a stretcher- this kit was a hell of a survival kit- and held the stretcher dutifully while Sam folded the kit back up and loaded it onto his back. He wrapped a pair of straps on the stretcher around his shoulders and lower back. Daredevil wasn’t sure how best to ask what they were.

 

“You fast?” Sam asked.

 

Daredevil shot him a look he usually reserved for the most idiotic of idiots. According to Foggy, it left the impression that he was “so completely and utterly done with the guy.”

 

“Okay, speedster. Keep up.” And then he was off the ground- literally- and Daredevil didn’t even have time to register it, because this guy was  _ fast  _ in the air and he had to think about every move he made as they sped towards Midtown.

 

The air was cool against the exposed parts of his face and neck, and he wondered idly how long it would take. He didn’t know where they were going, was just tracking the whir of Falcon’s mechanical wings and the twin heartbeats above him. It felt nice, to be in a flat-out sprint again, not running  _ from  _ anything but running  _ to  _ something. This, though, was controlled- he had to judge each distance, time each jump, make each movement count to conserve energy. He tried to use his hands as little as possible, fully aware they were covered in blood. 

 

Falcon made a dive and then swooped back up, reaching heights Daredevil wasn’t sure he could reach. But this was Avengers Tower he was standing in front of- loud electricity, talking, the scent of unfamiliar people. Most importantly, he didn’t hear the window Falcon had crashed through  _ close.  _ So he lashed out with his billy club at the window Sam had gone through, still open. It hit the window, and Daredevil scaled the building easily from there.

 

He reappeared at the broken window, legs aching and out of breath. “Clint.”

 

“On it,” Falcon said, in a muffled voice, as someone overhead- a female, Irish voice- broke in.

 

“Greetings, Daredevil. Boss has been notified of your presence and will be upstairs shortly.”   
  


The Devil jumped and whirled, but the voice was coming from directly overhead, and he couldn’t sense any bodies or heartbeats above him.

 

“What- where-”

  
“AI. You get used to it. Wash up and help out.”

 

He did, peeling back his gloves to wash his hands. He could still smell copper on his fingers after he finished, but it would do- Clint was bleeding all over the operating table and everything they were saying was being transmitted to some criminal organization. No time to really perfect it. He snapped a pair of nitrile gloves over his hands.

 

“Clint, we’re gonna inject you with something to knock you out,” Sam warned, and Clint let out a little puff of air with his nose.

 

“Don’t really care. Go for it.”

 

“Okay. Daredevil, do the honors? I’m gonna prep his leg for surgery.”

 

“We don’t have a medical professional, do we?” Daredevil sighed, uncapping the syringe and running his fingers along Clint’s arm until he found a spot with blood rushing under the surface, raising the skin temperature almost imperceptibly.

 

“Tell you later when our unwanted listeners are out of his leg.”

 

“Joy.” Daredevil flicked the syringe and gently inserted it into his arm; Clint inhaled, then exhaled as the sedative was injected. Sam counted under his breath while he sterilized Clint’s leg- the scent of copper was stronger now, and the skin was absorbing more soundwaves, so he assumed the pant leg had been removed.

 

By thirty, Sam started forward, but Daredevil held out a hand. “He’s not out yet. Just closed his eyes.” He kept his hand out for another fifteen seconds, until Clint’s breathing slowed and his heartbeat had dropped to about 70 bpm. “You can operate now.”

 

He heard Sam grunt a quiet “What the hell  _ are  _ you?” and the scent of antiseptic mixed with the sound of cotton against skin.

 

Another heartbeat was coming closer, combined with the whirring of an elevator and the scent of grease. He waited as Tony Stark opened the doors.

 

“Stark.”

 

“Daredevil! I don’t remember inviting  _ you  _ to the tower.”

 

The Devil didn’t grace him with a reply. Instead. he gave Sam the forceps he was about to need.

 

“And I  _ certainly  _ wouldn’t invite someone when we don’t even know what their powers are!” Stark continued cheerfully, taking a long sip of coffee- a spoonful of sugar, a teaspoon and a half of almond creamer, a tablespoon of whole milk.

 

Daredevil remained silent. “Scalpel?” Sam asked, and Daredevil handed it to him, then picked up a clamp to hold the edges of the wound apart. Sam swapped him for the bloody scalpel. “Give him a break,” he added, “the guy’s helping me patch Clint up again and he’s entitled to a secret identity.”

 

He saw Sam’s fingers moving, signing something to Stark, who nodded. Probably letting him know it was bugged. Then he returned to his surgery, extracting the first bug from Clint’s leg. 

 

“Can you thread the needle for me?” Sam asked. “My hands are a little shaky right now.”   
  


Daredevil fumbled with the needle a little, letting his sensitive fingers find the hole and guide the thread- really, more of a wire- through it. He tied it off and handed it to Sam, who began a row of neat stitches. In the meantime, Daredevil wiped the blood from the area to make it easier. Stark stood in the background, chattering away, but Daredevil had long since tuned him out almost subconsciously.

 

“-but I mean if you  _ really  _ wanted a room I’m sure I could fix one up for you-”

 

“Here, puzzle this one out.” He tossed Tony the bloodstained bugging device, and heard the whir of electronic scanning as his AI (presumably) scanned it. 

 

Sam was working on the second incision now, but Daredevil heard Clint’s heart rate speed up. He held his position for a second, scenting to see if anything was wrong with the first incision. 

 

“He’s waking up,” Daredevil realized, and crossed to where he could taste the sedatives more clearly. His fingers met some sort of keypad lock, which he opened easily. Stark whistled appreciatively as he cracked the drawer open and took a sedative syringe out.

 

“I used a diluted solution earlier,” Sam admitted. “Didn’t think it would take me this long, but the bugs are really far in there.”    
  


Daredevil injected Clint again as Tony said, “Damn, remind me to never leave anything without a  _ super- _ powerful lock near you again.”   
  


“Wait, I thought you said you weren’t good with machines?” Sam asked. “That doesn’t look like someone who’s bad with tech.”   
  


“Explain later,” Daredevil muttered, with no intention to do so.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello my name is red and i have no fucking clue how to do anything medical so please dont yell at me in the comments for not being a medical professional
> 
> my medical experience consists of: bandaging up my accidentally-pierced cartilage and bandaging cat scratches, not removing bullets or. uh. shooting people with listening devices


	4. Clint- Chapter 2

 

Okay, so it looked bad. 

 

He hadn’t meant to pick a fight with the local tracksuit Russians. Really, he hadn’t- they’d snuck into an apartment while he was asleep- but they led him on a wild goose chase through Manhattan, and then trapped him outside Hell’s Kitchen. And then they shot him and let him fall backward into the alley- lucky there had been a Dumpster below. But  _ Jesus,  _ whatever they’d shot him with hurt like hell, and it was all he could do to lay still and bite back little yelps of pain. Getting up? Out of the question.

 

And then Matt with his snark and his unfairly good skills at  _ stealing Clint’s goddamn phone  _ was there, and he knew he would be safe. Daredevil was good at what he did, after all. He would be safe if he just… dozed… off…

 

\------

 

When he came to again, everything  _ hurt _ . It smelled of antiseptic and the sheets felt paper-thin underneath him. He blindly felt around on the end table for his hearing aids, and then someone dropped them into his open hand. 

 

Who the hell-?

 

Clint cracked one eye. Bright hospital lights quickly made him reconsider the decision, and he shut it quickly, inserting his hearing aids without looking. But there was, in fact, one Daredevil, suit and everything, sitting next to him. He exhaled- his ribs ached. 

 

“How long was I out?” he asked. Daredevil took a second- probably thinking.

 

“Uh, not long after we finished surgery. Maybe two hours.”

 

“Great, thanks,” Clint said, sitting up and opening his eyes fully. He stifled a pained noise. “I’ve got dogs to feed. Thanks for making sure I didn’t die.”

 

“We just extracted three listening devices from your leg, and you’re gonna just leave? Like that? That’s it?” Clint paused, and Daredevil continued. “Because that’s literally the worst possible option.”

 

“Can’t wait forever,” Clint shrugged. Plus, Kate was supposed to be coming over today and she would never let him hear the end of it. Daredevil sighed and set his head into his hands.

 

“All right, I’m giving you two options- you stay here for another 48 hours or you can go home with a crutch.”

 

Clint smiled wryly and raised his eyebrows. “How about the third option where I leave and you don’t stop me?”

 

“Stark appointed me to make sure that doesn’t happen,” Daredevil said, leaning back in his chair. He pointed to a small glass on the bedstand. “Water?” 

 

Clint took a long sip of the water. “Tones is stepping in? Jesus.”

 

“You got shot three times with listening devices. They contain  _ lithium, _ Clint, we have to make sure that doesn’t get in your bloodstream. But FRIDAY said you’ll be okay to go as long as you check in on Friday.” He sounded serious, letting his chair fall onto all four legs and leaning forward. “I’m not opposed to letting you leave, but trust me, walking on that leg is gonna be bad news.

 

“Look, lawyer-man, don’t you have a business to run? Can’t you just leave me be?” Clint  _ really  _ didn’t want to show up back at the tower and deal with Kate laughing at him over it. And probably half his tenants laughing at him.

 

“It’s Saturday.” Even without seeing most of Daredevil’s face, he could see that he was Thoroughly Unimpressed. “I could go into the office, but that would be stupid.”

 

“Fair,” Clint conceded, leaning back. “Okay, uh, is anyone overly annoyed at me?”

 

“Nobody, really, but a fair warning you might get interrogated about me. Stark is annoyed at me because I won’t tell him my powers,” Daredevil grinned. “He’s convinced I have, like, weird night vision or something and that’s why I can’t read the weird energy field he put up in front of me.”

 

“Oh yeah, our vigilante power betting pool,” Clint said, without thinking.

  
“Your what,” Daredevil said flatly.

 

“Vigilante power betting pool! So far we have a bunch of New York’s best and most famous vigilantes- you, Jessica Jones, Iron Fist, Punisher,, hell, even Deadpool’s up there because none of us know his powers, uh. There were more, but we decided to exclude them since their powers are pretty obvious- Misty Knight’s got a bionic arm, Luke Cage’s bulletproof and super strong. Who am I missing?”

 

_ “The Black Spider-Man of Brooklyn, who has an assortment of known powers, meaning you are unsure of how many powers he has. _ ” FRIDAY helpfully suggested from the ceiling. Daredevil flinched a bit at the sudden noise. “ _ And Blindspot- you wanted to know if he had any additional powers outside vanishing. _ ”

 

“Oh yeah, I trained Blindspot myself. He’s a good kid, really nice.”

 

“YOU trained Blindspot?”

 

“Yeah,” Daredevil said in a reminiscent tone. “He likes hugging people. A lot.”

 

“Uh.”

  
“Bad at staying out of demonic rituals, though,” Daredevil grinned. “So. Crutches or staying here?”

 

“What the  _ fuck. _ Fine, just give me the damn crutches.”

 

“FRIDAY, where did Stark hide-?”

 

_ “Four steps to your left, bottom cabinet. They are folded up.” _

 

Clint watched him walk to the cabinet, which was locked with a higher-tech lock. Some sort of retinal scanner.

 

“FRIDAY, I can’t get into this.”

 

“Aw, damn,” Tony said, walking in at the most  _ inopportune time possible. _ “That’s a pity. Because Clint shouldn’t be leaving the tower, crutches or no crutches. He has lithium in his fucking leg.”

 

Clint thought for a second. Tony was blocking the elevator, and Daredevil was standing in front of the stairs. Only one other way out-

 

“Okay,” he shrugged, and threw himself out the window. 

 

Which, in retrospect, was a Very Bad Idea. In an instant, Daredevil had him by the back of the collar, and as they were free falling, he desperately threw one end of the billy club back up to the open window. They swung like a pendulum and crashed back in through the third-floor window, which happened to be the Avengers Museum, startling an elderly man in a pair of sunglasses and a cap. 

 

Clint tucked himself into a roll as he hit the ground, coming to a stop upside-down in front of the old Spiderman suit. He righted himself, shaking his head hard to clear the fogginess. Glass littered the floor, and a few feet away, Daredevil was already on his feet, stumbling blindly around the space. He tried to get up- if his leg didn’t hurt before, it sure as hell did now. The old man took a few steps back, then fled. 

 

“Clint?” Daredevil called, walking straight into a display case. “Where-”   
  


“Ow,” Clint groaned. 

 

“You are both complete and utter idiots,” Tony pronounced from the loudspeaker. The Devil was trying to find him, but kept bumping into things. “Daredevil, do you need a  _ cane? _ ” 

 

“Probably,” the Devil said, gritting his teeth. “Fucking glass.” 

 

It was the first time Clint had  _ ever  _ heard him swear. And if the articles were true, along with the rosary in his room…  “Don’t- Aren’t you, like, mega Catholic and never swearing or whatever?”   
  


“Ugh,” Daredevil replied simply, finally finding his way to Clint and tryin to help him up. It didn’t really work, but Clint appreciated the effort. He threw an elbow around Daredevil’s shoulder- his whole arm was bleeding where it had struck the window, shielding his face. He hadn’t noticed, but there was a small stream of blood drips where he’d rolled, and it stung to all hell now that he knew it was there.

 

They hobbled their way to the elevator. “The deaf leading the blind,” Clint joked under his breath. Daredevil grimaced, saying nothing.

 

As they stood in the elevator- well, the Devil stood, Clint had sunk to the floor- Clint’s mind wandered to Matt, saving him. His thoughts may also have contained an unfair amount of Matt’s abs. He wondered if Matt could hear his elevated heart rate any time he was nearby.  _ Shit. _ He’d have to overcome the stupid schoolboy crush.

 

The doors dinged, and Clint made a valiant attempt to stand back up. He resorted to leaning on the wall and half-limping, half-dragging himself out of the elevator.

 

“I’m honestly not sure what you expected to achieve with that,” Tony deadpanned, already offering an arm to help Clint to the bed. Clint took it gratefully and sat down hard, trying to keep his leg elevated. His arm was a bit of a different story. “So. Glass?”   
  


It took a moment to realize that Tony wasn’t talking to him, but to Daredevil. The Devil of Hell’s Kitchen leaned back against the wall, exhaling. “It, uh, messes with my powers.”

 

“Ah, right, because you have-?”   
  


“Yeah, you’re not getting that answer out of me that easy,” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t really want some SHIELD file leaking and suddenly all the villains in the world know I have x powers and glass makes them go all wonky. So if you don’t put that fact in a file, I’m sure the vigilante community of New York, not to mention all the citizens of Hell’s Kitchen, would thank you. If you don’t...” Daredevil paused dramatically, and Tony sighed, tying off the bandage around Clint’s arm- he hadn’t even noticed it being wrapped.

 

“Yeah, you’ll kill me? Plenty of people have tried that, don’t worry. I’m not too concerned about being killed by a guy in a kinky leather suit-”

 

“It’s not kinky. Or leather,” Daredevil said hotly. “And I wasn’t going to kill you. Just let you know that you can’t expect Daredevil’s assistance in any of your fights. Or any of NYC’s underground vigilantes, really- I promise I’ve been working with Spider-Man more than you have, and he might not be happy that my secrets got out to the world because of you.”

 

Tony tensed. “Spider-Man?”

 

“Trained him for a few years,” Daredevil said, offhand.

 

“Damn, you trained everyone in the city?” Clint joked.

 

“Most of the younger vigilantes, actually, yeah. Apart from the ones you tutored- heard you helped out Echo a bit, too.”

 

“Yeah,” Clint confirmed. “Deaf superheroes gotta stick together.”

 

“Fair enough,” Daredevil said.

 

“New York City has  _ so  _ many vigilantes,” Tony sighed. “I wish I could keep all of them safe and legal.”   
  


“It’d never work,” the Devil said, unusually gently. He’d dropped the harsh, gravelly voice. “I tried with Blindspot. Uh, didn’t go so well. Almost ended up with him in a morgue.”

 

“Jesus,” Tony said, looking slightly sick. Clint let his jaw go slack in shock and horror. He’d met Blindspot, after all. A good kid. Only wanted the best for Chinatown and for his family and friends. 

 

“My advice? Just give them tips, teach them how not to die instead of telling them not to fight. It’s not gonna work.”   
  


“Yeah,” Tony said. He sounded shaken. “I know.”

 

“Nah, no you don’t,” Daredevil said, turning to him sharply. His voice took on a flinty edge, returning to the gravelly tone. “You don’t have a secret identity. You can have a relationship without being afraid of putting them in danger, because you’re Tony Stark and everyone knows you’re Iron Man. You’ve put yourself so above the common people- that’s why you don’t have to train all these vigilantes. Have you heard of the vigilante who patrolled the Heights?”

 

“Uh, no.”   
  


“Yeah. It’s because she  _ died, _ Stark. She died when she got too wrapped up in my business. The people that killed her? They weren’t going after Daredevil. They were going after  _ me. _ ”   
  


“You think I can’t be afraid of putting people in danger?” Clint felt helpless, watching the two fight. “My fucking home got blown up,  _ Devil. _ You’ve never had to deal with that.”

 

“If I remember right, it’s because you gave out your address on national TV and informed them to come and get you.”   
  


“I almost died.”   
  


“Yeah, because you were reckless. You didn’t think about the effects your actions would have on the people you love.” Tony jerked back as though punched, but Daredevil kept going. “ _ Boo-hoo, my multimillion-dollar estate in Malibu got blown up because I was an idiot who didn’t consider the consequences of my own actions because my head was so far up my own ass that I wasn’t thinking about my girlfriend or staff or anyone other than myself!  _ Get over it, Stark, and get over  _ yourself. _ ” 

He stopped, breathing hard, and stepped back- Clint hadn’t even realized Matt had been steadily getting closer and louder as he’d argued.   
  


Tony took a second to compose himself. Even Clint could tell he was avoiding answering when he replied, “You should be a lawyer.”

 

“Been there, done that, got the hoodie,” Daredevil said, without looking back, and leapt out the window. Clint watched him swing off using his billy club.

 

“FRI, look up law firms in Hell’s Kitchen for me,” Tony announced, sitting down hard. He was shaking.

 

“Are you going to be okay?” Clint asked carefully. 

 

“Yeah,” Tony said unconvincingly. “I’ll be fine. Hey- he doesn’t have super vision, does he?”   
  


“That’s for me to know and you to maybe find out,” Clint said, grateful for the change of subject. Daredevil may have had enhanced senses, but Clint didn’t need to be able to tell the change in someone’s heartbeat to tell that the Devil didn’t reciprocate his feelings. Especially not after that outburst he’d just had.

 

Fuck.

 

Clint was  _ so  _ screwed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love Tony. Don't get me wrong, I really do- he's a great character.
> 
> But Matt is slow to trust and quick to anger, especially when it comes to rich people who think they're above everyone else. I'm trying to stay as close to a combination of comic and TV canon as I can, which does mean sticking with their character flaws. Neither of them is particularly a "team player." I literally can't think of a single instance in canon where Matt hasn't tried to push someone away so they don't get hurt, but Tony does the opposite- he tries to keep his friends close to him so he can protect them.
> 
> Matt doesn't "get" this ideology, and the big difference between him and Tony is that while Iron Man will save the city from a villain's attack, it's Daredevil who has to clean up his mess. Matt resents him for that. There wasn't a good way they could meet up and *not* fight.


	5. Matt- Chapter 3

Matt returned to his apartment in a bit of a huff.

That fucking billionaire had no use telling him what to do. Not an Avenger, at least. Sure, Rand was a billionaire, but he was different- he was a  _ vigilante, _ same as Matt, who didn’t show his face because it could get people hurt. Danny understood the basic concept of  _ common sense _ . Stark did not.

 

And Clint was  _ still  _ scared of him. Whenever Matt came closer, his heart rate and breathing picked up. He felt… guilty, almost, for making Clint nervous. But he didn’t know what was causing it- he was scared even when Matt wasn’t wearing the suit.

 

He sat down at his table, picking up a Braille book he’d been working with. Nelson, Murdock, and Page was doing well for itself, but he still felt kind of bad about it all. They weren’t making much money, either- they were  _ still  _ getting paid in chickens.

 

Which is why he was entirely shocked when he walked into the office the next day to find a couch in one corner. 

 

“Uh,” he said, tapping the couch with his cane experimentally. It was squishy. “Is this our couch now?”   
  
“It’s a funny story,” Karen said, nailing him with a Look. “An Avenger dropped it off as an apology.”

 

“Stark?” Matt said, confused. “Stark doesn’t do apologies.”

 

“Not Stark,” Karen said.

 

“Wait, wait, wait, can we go back to the comment about Stark? What were  _ you  _ doing talking to Tony Stark? You’re a vigilante.” Foggy jabbed a finger at Matt.   
  


“Yelling at him.”

 

“ _ Matt, _ ” Foggy said exasperatedly

 

“No,” Karen interjected. “It was Hawkeye.”

 

_ “Hawkeye? _ Why Hawkeye? He didn’t do anything wrong. You said it was an apology?”

 

“Yeah. For making you do something or other?”   
  


“Oh, for the love of Christ,” Matt said, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “He didn’t  _ make  _ me do jack.”

 

“What happened?” Karen’s voice was cautious- Matt knew she was worried about prying into Daredevil territory.

 

“I found him in a Dumpster,” he said. It came out more matter-of-fact than he’d anticipated. “He was half-dead; someone’d shot him with three listening bugs in his leg. He called ‘em the Tracksuit Mafia, and apparently, they hang around his house.”

 

“Huh.”    
  


“Wait, how did he find us?” Foggy asked. He paced a second, then paused. “Does he know your real identity?”

 

“...I- yes, but-”

 

_ “Matt! _ ” Karen exclaimed.

 

“And you didn’t think it  _ may  _ have been, I don’t know, a good idea to tell us?!” Foggy said, throwing up his hands in exasperation. “Come on, Matt!” And that was just unfair. He didn’t  _ mean  _ to keep it secret. It just hadn’t been something to mention.

 

“It happened literally, like, two weeks ago,” he said defensively. “It just didn’t come up. What was I gonna do, write you a nightly patrol report?”

 

“Well, now I’m thinking that wouldn’t be such a bad idea!”

 

“Foggy, you know how bad that would be if that got out,” Karen chided. “Probably not the safest bet.”

 

“Either way,” Matt said, poking at the couch, “we can’t keep this.”   
  
“Why not?” the other two said simultaneously.

 

“It could have- I don’t know, a  _ tracker  _ in it or something-”

 

“Can’t you just check for that?” Karen sat down on the couch. “Besides, it’s cushy.”   
  


Matt paused and listened. No matter how hard he strained his ears, pushing past the noises of the city, the neighbors, the air conditioning, the sound of Karen and Foggy breathing, he couldn’t hear anything from the couch. It sounded completely innocuous.

 

“Fine,” he relented. 

 

\-----

 

He found Hawkeye that night, after scanning what felt like the whole city for him. He even checked @herospotter on Twitter, who had apparently seen the Punisher skulking around but the last update of Hawkeye was him “returning to Bed-Stuy.”

 

Well, it was as good a place as any to start. 

 

So he changed to street clothes and got on the subway, calmly sitting- it was almost midnight, after all- and got off at the closest stop to Bed-Stuy. He changed into his costume while in a dark alley- at least, he assumed it was dark- and climbed to the rooftops, snapping his fingers and listening to the sounds of the city to form a map around him.

 

Then, he focused hard, trying to block out the sounds of people and cars and electricity in favor of the scent of dog fur and pizza and the sound of a bowstring’s twang, the slight static-crackle of a hearing aid, the grating-smooth tone of Hawkeye’s voice. 

 

He cocked his head at an apartment building nearby. It was faint, but he could smell coffee and hear a dog barking and, more importantly, he could taste blood heavy on his tongue. 

 

So he took off, boots pressing against the gravel rooftops and taking off again, spraying pebbles in their wake. Wind whipping against his cheeks. 

 

A windowpane was in his way. An odd surface of reflection, too much noise and none at all. He could identify glass. It just  _ sucked.  _

 

He rapped on the glass.

 

The window opened. “CLINT!” The voice of the person who’d opened it- probably early 20s, female, smelled like dog and Clint and paper and somewhere else, somewhere far away. “THERE’S A FREAKY VIGILANTE GUY OUT HERE!”

 

“Freaky vigilante guy,” the Devil repeated, making his voice hoarse. He grinned. “I’m Daredevil. You are…?”   
  


“Hawkeye,” she said, offering him her hand. Which didn’t make much sense to him. 

 

“You shapeshift now?” he asked, cocking his head. He recognized the scent, now- one of his clients. Some defamation issue. 

 

“Nope. Two Hawkeyes. Call me Kate.”   
  


“Got it.” Daredevil took the hand and climbed through the window. The apartment wasn’t small, he could tell now- there were stairs in the corner, maybe leading to a roof or to a bedroom, and a kitchen on this floor. He took off his helmet. If she was a vigilante, too, he was probably safe. Plus, Clint trusted her. 

 

He stood there for a second, wondering where Clint was. There was a second heartbeat, he realized now, speeding slowly up. “Is Clint home?” 

 

“He’s just asleep. He’ll be down in a second. Coffee, or do you not do coffee?”   
  


“I’ll never say no to coffee,” Daredevil admitted, and she poured him a cup from a half-full pot. It was lukewarm, but it was  _ coffee, _ and its rich scent and bitter taste and the feeling of  _ caffeine  _ sinking into his tongue was the best thing in the world.

 

“So, no offense, but who are you? I don’t recognize you, which is saying something, since you’re… not really subtle,” she started, making a weird gesture with her hand that was probably indicating the helmet in his lap.

 

“I’m just a guy, really. I protect Hell’s Kitchen.” Her heartbeat picked up a little.

 

“Oh, wait- were you the one who died like a year and a half ago? And then killed that priest.”   
  


“I didn’t die,” he said crossly. “And I was framed for that. He was… Father Lantom and I were close.”

 

“Sorry,” she said. “That sucks.”

 

“What sucks?” Clint said, and the Devil almost jumped. “Aw, dude, come on! You take your mask off around everyone you meet?”   
  


“Nah, just people you trust,” he said without thinking. Clint’s heartbeat jumped about 12 feet, changing to a quicker cadence that didn’t seem to be calming down. Which…  _ woah, _ okay, so that was what that was. That had… implications he didn’t want to think about yet.

 

“I’m honored,” Clint said, probably trying to mask his racing heart. “She hasn’t been interrogating you, has she?”

 

“Nope,” Daredevil said, sipping the coffee. “Didn’t even say a thing about me being blind or whatever.”

 

“Why would I?” She sounded confused. “You’ve been making his way around all right, and  _ he’s  _ a deaf superhero, so…”

 

Daredevil could  _ hug  _ her. “Clint, how come you get all the cool kids to tutor?”

 

“I think Blindspot would take offense to that. And probably Spidey, too. Both Spideys. Not to mention Misty- don’t think I don’t know you’ve been helping Luke with her, even though she’s a fully functional adult,” Clint joked. “Plus the whole Defenders team.”

 

“Who?” He cocked his head again, confused. Who the hell were the Defenders and why hadn’t he heard of them?   
  


“Uh, you’re  _ on  _ the team. It’s all the people who took down Midland Circle- Iron Fist, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, and you.”

 

“Oh, uh, we- we’re not really. A team.”

 

“Bullshit,” Kate said. There was a creak of wood and the thump of what sounded like feet on the table- she’d probably just leaned back and put her feet up. “Anyway. What were you here for?”   
  


“Oh-” He remembered he’d actually had an objective suddenly. “Yeah- uh, I wanted to say thank you for the couch, Clint, but I didn’t need an apology. You were hurt. I helped you out. Nothing to be sorry for.”   
  


“Uh, not for the bullet wounds, but thank you for that.”   
  


“You were  _ shot!? _ ” Kate exclaimed, indignant. “And I didn’t know?!” 

 

“Sorry,” both men said at the same time. Matt couldn’t see the look on Clint’s face, but guilt had a certain smell about it. “I thought you would be excessively worried,” Clint added.

 

“Asshole,” Kate muttered, sipping her coffee. “You have no right to be right.”

 

He set down his mug. “Anyway. Why were you apologizing?”

 

“Tony was an asshole,” he said. “About your powers, about being touchy with Spidey, about calling your suit ‘kinky leather’ or whatever-”   
  


Matt scrunched his eyebrows together in confusion. “Wait, so you’re apologizing for Stark being a dick? He wasn’t being that much of a dick.”

 

“Yeah, but you-”

 

“I flew off the handle,” Matt confessed. He dropped his voice, only half-noticing when Clint’s heartbeat hitched. “I know I did. I shouldn’t have been so aggressive at him. I should be the one apologizing.”

 

“Yeah, okay, sure. How long was he interrogating you while I was out?”   
  


“Uh, objection, Your Honor, leading the defendant,” Matt said. 

 

“Objection, avoiding the question,” Clint volleyed back. “Come on, man.”

 

“Look,” Kate jumped in, “er- sorry, Daredevil, but- guys, it’s not a race to the bottom. Both you and Stark made stupid decisions in the moment and were generally awkward. It’s fine, whatever. Besides, if you knew anything about Stark, you wouldn’t be so worried. The next time you meet he’s gonna have three new suits for you and is gonna carry on talking like nothing ever happened.”

 

“She’s right,” Clint said. “Dammit. Why are you always right.”   
  


“Superpower,” Kate said. “People have been searching for Hawkeye’s superpower for years. I guess you finally found it.”

 

Matt debated for a quick second whether or not to flirt a little more. “Wonder if you’ve got any other superpowers?”

 

“Uh, not really,” Clint said. “M’just a good shot.”

 

Fuck. Was he just oblivious or missing the point? Kate sounded as though she was trying to stifle laughter. Well, he’d already dug the hole. “Uh, yeah, you, uh, shot me through the heart.”   
  
“Wait, really? Is that your tragic backstory? Did I make someone have a tragic backstory? When was this???”   
  


“Uh.” What was he supposed to say to that? “I’m- I’m not-”

 

“Clint, you’re not supposed to be the blind one,” Kate sighed exasperatedly. 

 

“What? What am I missing?”   
  


“Well this has been great but I gotta go really thanks so much for the coffee I’ll see you later,” Matt said, rushing the words out of his mouth. He shoved the helmet back on and leapt out the window. Because he may have been stupid, but he was  _ consistent. _

 

“What did I do?!” he heard from behind him, but he didn’t turn around. He was pretty sure his face was a brighter red than his costume at this point, and he was pretty certain he wasn’t gonna make it home before sunrise, but whatever.

 

He laid down atop the MTA back to Hell’s Kitchen and groaned.

 

“You are the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen,” he told himself firmly. “You save people daily. You can handle the worst flirting attempts since college.”   
  


And then he paid attention to the announcements over the train’s loudspeaker, because he couldn’t see and didn’t know when he was supposed to be jumping off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whoops i wasn't supposed to finish the chap this fast
> 
> also, i've been debating whether or not to make a discord for my fics? thoughts?


	6. Clint-Chapter 2.5

"Oh, my god, he was flirting with me," Clint said. He glared at Kate. "YOu didnt thINk to tell me about this?"  


"It was funnier watching you try and flirt back" Kate smirked. "Now go after him, right?"

 

"Yeah," Clint agreed, and got up. He jumped out the window because what the fuck why not. And then he fell into the streets and got hit by a car. 

 

AND THATS HOW HAWKEYE DIED END OF STORY HAPPY FUCKING BRITHDAY

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> .......Happy April Fool's!


	7. Clint- Chapter 3

It was a full three days later before Clint realized. 

 

“Oh my God,” Clint moaned, laying his head in his hands at the dinner table. He and Kate were eating some burgers that one of his tenants had made, and they were fucking delicious, but also- “He was  _ flirting  _ with me?!”

 

“You,” Kate announced around a bite of burger, “are the most oblivious motherfucker on the surface of the planet.”

 

“Jesus Christ,” Clint said. He walked over to the coffee pot, picked it up, and downed the whole thing.

 

“So…. you gonna go find him?” Kate said, scrolling through her phone.

 

“Where the fuck am I gonna find him?”

 

“Hell’s Kitchen might be a good start,” Kate said boredly. “Seeing as, you know, he lives and works there. Apparently he was pretty embarrassed. You should go apologize.” She shoved her phone in his face and Clint had to laugh aloud at the blurry picture of Matt, sitting atop a subway, visibly red-faced beneath the costume. 

 

“Tomorrow night,” Clint said, taking another bite. He opened the burger and added more onions, because onions were the fucking best. “I’ll talk to him tomorrow.”

 

Kate grinned. “Go get ‘em, Casanova.”

 

“Ugh,” Clint said. “Okay.” 

 

“I gotta go make a call.” Kate stood, grabbing her phone. The mischievous glint hadn’t left her eyes.

 

“Mmm,” Clint acknowledged without looking up. He couldn’t believe it. The guy he’d had a fucking schoolboy crush on for like, a month, was flirting with him. And he didn’t even fucking  _ notice. _ It was super-obvious flirting, too! What the hell. Dammit.

 

\-----

 

He never did manage to talk to Daredevil the next day, though, because over the course of the next day, he got about 3 or 4 calls from the Avengers to clean up some stuff in Central Park. Apparently the villain was a technokinete and was messing with even the Widow’s Bites, and Cap was out of the country. They needed someone with “good old-fashioned weapons” to get the job done, which evidently meant abandoning his nice compound bows and using his plain wooden one, as well as having to ditch his Cool Arrows™. That took him a while to clear up- not having aerial support was annoying, and the chick kept realizing where the arrows were coming from and trying to attack him by turning off his hearing aids, which was just inconsiderate. 

 

“Rude,” he yelled- well, he thought he did, he couldn’t exactly hear it- as he fired another three arrows simultaneously. One  _ finally  _ buried into the woman’s leg, and she fell to the ground, yelling something.

 

“Do you mind turning those stupid powers off so I can hear what you’re saying?” Clint asked not-so-cordially as he slammed the woman over the head with his bow. The technokinete passed out in the middle of Central Park, and his hearing aids buzzed back to life.

 

He tapped on one, turning it to  _ comm  _ mode. “Hey, Clint to Mission Asshat?”

 

“Haha, very funny. You beat her?” Tony asked from the other side.

 

“Obviously.” Honestly, he was a little insulted. He wasn’t someone who couldn’t handle himself, despite what the Avengers seemed to think.

 

“Not saying anything,” Tony said mildly. “I’m sending a suit by for pickup.”

 

Clint retrieved the arrow from the woman’s leg before hunting for the rest. “Okay. She’s KO’d but might not be for long.”

 

“Yeah, whatever, suit should be there in two. By the way, did Daredevil’s  _ vivid  _ red face in the Bulletin headlines have anything to do with you?” 

 

Clint flushed. “The Bulletin needs some new headlines,” he said, cooler than he anticipated. Before he could stick his foot even further in his mouth, he turned off his comms and focused his attention on guarding the girl like a cat defending its food stash. Except that this cat was also deaf and leaning on a bow and browsing Instagram and trying very hard to ignore the warmth in his cheeks when Tony had mentioned Daredevil.

 

God, what the fuck was his life. He was an  _ Avenger  _ with a stupid crush on an aloof, badass, smoking-hot vigilante who dressed up as the Devil every night and went out to stop petty crime. He absently searched up the #daredevil tag on Instagram, just to feel the  _ badump  _ of his heart again.

 

And then Tony’s suit showed up with a  _ whrrr _ of repulsors, blasting him with heat, and Hawkeye hoisted the unconscious woman into the suit. The presence of Tony’s suit, not to mention the fight, had attracted more than a few passersby, and Clint found himself surrounded by  _ fans. _ Which was thoroughly unusual for him.

 

“Who’s Hawkeye?” he asked innocently as a group of boys ran up to him and asked for an autograph. “Never heard of him.”

 

“You’re Hawkeye!” one of them said brightly.

 

“Never heard of him,” Clint lied, and, upon spotting another couple of teens running for him, he decided it would be best to make his exit.

 

So, he did what was possibly the most dignified, badass way he could think of- he said, “Sorry, uh, got something-” and ran from the group of literal children who were chasing him.

 

_ Classy, _ his mind supplied.  _ Real classy, Barton. _

 

_ Shut up,  _ he replied, hopping on his bike and revving it as he zipped out of the park.

 

\-----

 

He ended up having to go to Hell’s Kitchen, since there were still a few  _ very  _ resolute kids stalking him and he didn’t want to lead them to Bed-Stuy. The area was pretty run-down since they barely received any cleanup funds after their frequent disasters, and it worked a charm to scare the kids off. 

 

Except now he was in Daredevil’s territory. Which meant he immediately had to turn around and ride home, like a coward, because he honestly didn’t know how to face the man. He also didn’t want to embarrass or out him at his office, because getting fired was generally bad.

 

His phone rang. He put it up to his ear with one hand at the traffic light.

 

“Hello, this is Barton.”

 

“Don’t hang up on me, man, what’d you do to Daredevil?” Tony sounded amused. “Someone said they saw him in broad daylight, observing a small motorbike with a guy on it. A guy who just so happened to be wearing  _ your  _ chevron.”

 

Clint transferred the call to his helmet and put the phone in the seat pocket as he started moving again. “Look, I- it’s not my place to tell you.”  _ Plus it’s really fucking embarrassing and you’re never gonna let me live it down. _

 

“On a scale from  _ pranked him with silly string  _ to  _ murdered everyone he loved,  _ how bad did you fuck up?”   
  


“I didn’t realize he was flirting with me and it was really awkward and he had to leave,” Clint sighed.

 

There was a loud, long moment of laughter on the other end. “Hey! Look, I tried, okay! And it’s not that he’s not hot outside the suit, but-”

 

“Look, come back to the Tower, okay? We’ll talk shop and we’ll talk Hornhead.”

 

“Can’t get out of it?” Clint asked, even though he already knew the answer.

 

“Nope,” Tony said, popping the P in a moment of static over the phone. 

 

“Okay,” Clint said, already turning the bike around to head back to Midtown. “You’re paying for my gas.”

 

“I’m upgrading your bike to run off solar power,” Tony groaned. Clint knew all too well that that wouldn’t be the only change made- he’d probably get the bike back and it would be able to fly, go underwater, create spontaneous force fields, and contact twelve different alien races. Still, though, free gas.

 

“You do that,” Clint eventually answered. “You do that.”

 

\-----

 

“So let me get this straight,” Tony said, through the screws he was holding in his teeth. “He fucking told you that you’d shot him through the heart, and made a fucking sex joke, and you  _ missed  _ it?!”

 

“I never claimed to be good at romance!” Clint protested, chewing angrily on his Cheetos. “And  _ what  _ are you doing to my radio?”

 

“Tuning it into a police scanner,” Tony said, fiddling with the wires. “You’re an Avenger. We’re all supposed to be good at flirting.”

 

“Was that on the job description?” Clint said grumpily. “He’s the Devil. Forgive me for not assuming the fucking Devil of Hell’s Kitchen was flirting with me.”

 

“Well, just assume Franklin Nelson is flirting with you!”

 

Now Clint was thoroughly confused. “Who?”

 

“Franklin Nelson. That’s the man under the suit, right?”

 

“No?”   
  


“It’s got to be, though! There’s only one law firm in the area of Hell’s Kitchen he’s most frequently found in- it’s called Nelson, Murdock, & Page. He’s definitely not Page, because he’s a man, and he’s not Murdock because Murdock is blind.”

 

Clint could see now the appeal of being a blind vigilante. Nobody even bothered to consider Matt a suspect. “Uh, maybe he doesn’t work in that area of Hell’s Kitchen? I don’t know, Tony, I wasn’t gonna ask him where he worked.” He crunched another Cheeto between his teeth.

 

“That would make sense,” Tony said matter-of-factly, screwing the panel to his bike back on, “but we know that the firm’s rumored to have had contacts with Daredevil. Lots of things at the wrong times. Apparently a year or two back they were in the DA’s office when the Punisher shot the place up, even though they’d previously defended the guy in court.”

 

“Huh,” Clint said. He wasn’t sure how to respond. He knew they were okay, of course, but he also knew that Nelson wasn’t the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen. Could he pull Tony off that track?

 

“And around the same time, Page- their paralegal, probably- was held hostage by the Punisher. He must’ve known that Nelson was Daredevil and used it to get back at him.”   
  


“Or.” Clint drew the word out, trying to come up with another explanation, “Castle was just pissed that he was determined guilty even with his whatever-the-fuck crack explanation the lawyers gave. It was a decent attempt, though.”

 

“Fuck,” Tony muttered. “You might be right. I’ll look into it. Maybe someone’ll be tracking Castle and we’ll ask him the questions.”

 

“No offense, but I’m pretty sure Castle would probably kill you,” Clint said. “What are you doing now?”

 

“Uh…” Tony looked down at his hands. “Rewiring your bike to be faster?”   
  


“Cool,” Clint said, and shoved a few more Cheetos into his mouth. He didn’t need it, but whatever. If he was going to be chased down by fans he wouldn’t mind the upgrade. 

 

“He wouldn’t kill me,” Tony continued, picking up a soldering iron. “I’m charming. Polite.”

 

“ _ Polite, _ ” Clint repeated dubiously. “Also, note that you’re talking about the fucking Punisher. He would  _ absolutely  _ kill you. Hell, he’d kill me.”

 

“Stab him with a tranq,” Tony said. 

 

“You have a death wish.”   
  


“Maybe so.” Tony set the soldering iron back down, having successfully rewired whatever he was trying to rewire. “All right, now I can go install those solar panels.”

 

“You didn’t even install the thing you were originally gonna?”

 

“Oh, that reminds me! FRI, remind me to keep tabs on all the employees at N, M, & P.”   
  


“They won’t enjoy that.” Clint tossed the bag into the trash without looking and began the work of licking the Cheeto dust off his fingers.

 

“They won’t know.”

 

“Daredevil will,” Clint said. “Even if he doesn’t find out, I’ll tell him.”

 

“You won’t.”

 

“I will.”

 

“You won’t, because I’m gonna install a fucking bug in your hearing aids that makes them crap out randomly if you do.”

 

“Asshole.”   
  


“Takes one to know one.”

 

Clint sighed, and Tony reached blindly for the part DUM-E offered him; Clint was pretty sure he was just autopilot-building a whole new solar panel at this point. “Look,” Clint continued, “just gimme a chance with him, okay? Give me a week. If I haven’t shot my shoot- shoot my shot- shot my shot?” 

 

“So you’re promising to shoot your shot in a week or less,” Tony confirmed.

 

“Yep.”

 

“What’ll you give me? If you lose?” And  _ oh,  _ it was a bet now. Clint thought for a second. What would he not mind losing that Tony thought he would be devastated by?

 

“My favorite rainbow bow,” Clint offered. It was less than $60, and he had an Avengers black credit card, he’d survive. Hell, he could always buy a better bow and paint it rainbow.

 

Tony snorted. “Useless to me.” He paused, and then his eyes lit up. “Wait- no,  _ useful _ , deal. DUM-E, solar casing?”

 

“And if you lose?” Clint said.    
  


Tony paused grabbing the the solar panel casing from the bot. “Bragging rights.”   
  


“No deal,” Clint said. Bragging rights were something they usually won automatically just by winning the bet. No way was he giving Stark his bow in return for  _ extra bragging rights. _   
  


He needed to keep Tony off their trail, though, otherwise he’d be all  _ over  _ Double D’s life in seconds. “How about this: you lose, you stop digging into the lawyers, their identities, their firm, their lives, et cetera. Also, you stop digging into who Daredevil is, what powers he has, all that.  _ And  _ you can’t look into them for this week. FRI, if he accepts the deal, put the subjects on lockdown for the week, okay?”

 

“I wasn’t going to-” Tony stopped, because Clint could already tell it was a lie. “Okay, yeah. Fine. Deal. Your time starts now”

 

They shook on it, Clint’s hand coming away sticky with grease. He made a face and made his way through the tangled heaps of metal to the in-lab sink. 

 

_ Okay. No big deal. _ Just the choice between possibly ruining his friendship with Daredevil or revealing Matt’s  _ and  _ Daredevil’s secret identities, powers, and blindness. Because Tony would  _ absolutely  _ capitulate on the opportunity, and sooner or later anyone with Tony’s resources, determination, and curiosity would figure it out.

 

What could possibly go wrong?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What could go wrong, indeed?
> 
> Muahaha.
> 
> As always, feel free to drop a comment! I live for your kind words and I love answering questions :D


	8. Matt- Chapter 4

“Scream,” the mafia leader commanded.

 

“No,” Daredevil said for the millionth time. He wasn’t sure how he’d gotten there. Well, no, that was a lie. He knew exactly how he’d gotten there.

 

It’d started after he noticed Hawkeye in his territory. Wondered if the man had come back, maybe to talk. God knows he’d embarrassed himself enough that last time. But… he couldn’t help but realize that he did, actually, want to maybe date Hawkeye. Which was a  _ weird  _ thought. But… something about the archer intrigued Daredevil. Made his heart speed up at the stupid corny jokes, at the whir of his hearing aids, at the  _ twang  _ of a bowstring. He’d never liked bows since Stick and since the Hand. But… Clint changed that.

 

He’d heard a cry for help, then, from an alleyway. Hell’s Kitchen knew him. People knew it was better to yell, “DAREDEVIL!” then it was to yell, “HELP!” They got better results with the former. So when he heard his name from ten blocks down, he didn’t even have to think about it before racing in the direction of the scream.

 

He landed in a familiar alley behind a barbershop- he could smell the shaving cream- but… it was nearly empty. No aggressor and victim; no victim, really, from what he could tell, because there was no rapid heartbeat accompanied by the quick breaths and salt-scented tears of someone who needed help.

 

Just someone whose heart beat strong and true; someone he didn’t recognize, but whose breath smelt of cigars and blood, whose hands reeked of metal and of paper.

 

He didn’t have time to react before one hand was stabbed with a knife, seemingly materializing out of nowhere. He gritted his teeth around a yell of pain.

 

“He hurt my men,” Cigars said, entirely too dramatically.

 

Daredevil grunted as he tried to lash out with his other hand, but was pistol-whipped across the chin. He fell backward hard, but pushed himself back up, yanking the knife from his hand and swinging it through the air. The metal sang as it missed.  _ Damn. _

 

His head rang as he dodged another slash at him. Daredevil dropped the knife. He didn’t know how to use one well, and it was only going to hinder him. Instead, he lunged with a fist and was promptly tripped, landing hard on the pavement. 

 

Something was being released in the air now, something that he could smell. It made his ears feel like they were stuffed with cotton. He rolled over, trying to keep the last known landscape in mind, and made to run. Instead, he ran straight into a brick wall and hit the ground hard. 

 

“Blinding gas.” Cigars sounded triumphant for someone who had just tried to blind an already-blind-man. Granted, it had worked- his nose and tongue alone couldn’t tell him where the man was. “You’re gonna tell me everything you know about Hawkeye.”

 

“His files were released to the public,” Daredevil hissed, struggling to his feet. “What the hell do you wanna know?”

 

“Everything,” Cigars said.

 

“You’re not getting shit out of me,” Daredevil growled, and tried to hit the man in the groin. His hand went straight through the air. The man easily knocked his leg out from under him and put a gun to the small of his back.

 

“You’re right. I want to hear it straight from him.”   
  


Cold dread doused Daredevil. He was bait, then. “He’s not close by. He doesn’t even live in Manhattan.”   
  


“But he patrols nightly,” Cigars said. He could hear the smile in his voice. “So you’re going to scream.” 

 

Daredevil stayed silent. Wondering how to get out of the situation. He couldn’t hear, couldn’t smell anymore, either- the scent of the gas had numbed his nose. He could only taste the man’s excitement and his own blood in the air.

 

“Well, go on then! Cry for help.” Cigars sounded impatient, and Daredevil had to resist the urge to laugh lest his back be blown out by the gun in his hand. He couldn’t tell how many bullets were in the chamber anymore. Couldn’t tell if it was cocked. Couldn’t hear the man’s heartbeat. “Hawkeye will come. So why not? It’s your only chance for survival.”

 

“No,” Daredevil rasped.

 

“Look what good it’ll do you,” Cigars said. The gun moved to his throat- pressed against the vertebrae there. He tried to grab at it, to disarm the man, but he only made an annoyed noise as Daredevil’s bloodstained, formerly-impaled hand slipped off with a white-hot, searing pain that rocketed through his whole body. He couldn’t hold back the half-bitten-off gasp when his hand hit the ground, and found the treads of a boot replacing the gun. A foot was harder to remove than a gun, especially with his good arm pinned under his chest.

 

The pressure on the boot increased, and Daredevil gasped for air for a second. His brain, swirling with  _ how escape need escape  _ exploded with  _ DANGER DANGER DANGER  _ and he thrashed for a second.  _ Don’t waste energy, Matty, _ cut through it all and for once, he followed his internal Stick’s instructions. He let himself go limp.

 

It worked. The boot’s pressure lessened, and he took a rattling gasp of air. He hoped no passersby saw this. The Devil of Hell’s Kitchen, reduced to a gasping mess under a random mafia member’s boot. That wasn’t how he worked. He was supposed to be a hero, but with this substance heavy in his ears and lungs, he was helpless. 

  
  


“Quick learner, aren’t you?” the man said condescendingly, and Daredevil wanted to punch him  _ so badly. _ Wanted to hurt him, throw him against a wall, leave him battered for the cops. How could he have been trapped so easily? The bait was so obvious now! “You were born for this.”

 

“Kill me,” Daredevil gritted out. “If you’re going to. I’d rather die than give up information.”   
  


“Oh, no, I won’t be doing that.”

 

Fear wormed its way into Daredevil’s lungs, flickering uncertainly there, fueled by whatever pungent substance was still in the air. 

 

“I want to see you cry out for help,” Cigars said. “Scream for someone to come and save you. I promise I’ll let you go if they do. I have a grudge to settle, you see.”

 

Daredevil couldn’t hear his heartbeat. But he  _ was  _ a lawyer, which gave him excellent senses as to whether someone was lying or not even when their heartbeat wasn’t audible. This man… Daredevil trusted him as far as he could throw him with his stabbed hand and the boot against his throat. He stayed silent. Wary, and on guard. Tried to move his legs up to his chest, but Cigars kicked him in the sternum when he did. 

 

“Go on. Are you really going to make me kick it out of you? It won’t matter if Hawkeye comes for you once you’re dead.” Daredevil spotted his opening and made to run, but the sudden loss of air-  _ again- _ stopped that idea in its tracks. He coughed, twice, a broken sound, when the man removed his foot.

 

“We both know that I’m not gonna yell. You’re using me as bait,” Daredevil said, his throat still feeling as though he would never breathe again. “Not that he can’t handle himself.”

 

“He’s deaf,” Cigars said carelessly. “What’s he gonna do?”

 

Daredevil felt hot rage  _ surge  _ inside him then, and shoved himself upwards, trying to throw the man off guard. How dare he? This ableist asshole-

 

The asshole pistol-whipped him again, this time across the back of the head. He fell back, head ringing, to slump against the wall.

 

“Scream,”  Cigars said angrily.

 

“No,” Daredevil said. It would have sounded petulant in any other voice, but he was glad then for his gravelly voice. “I’m not baiting Hawkeye for you.”

 

“Stubbornness. Why won’t you do it? He’s just an archer, just an Avenger. I thought you didn’t like the Avengers, found them pretentious, right? So why him?”

 

Daredevil stayed silent.  _ Amendment I. Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion... _

 

“Is it because you’re friends with him?”

 

_...or prohibiting the free exercise thereof… _

 

“Is it because you’re more?”

 

_...or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; the right of the people… _

 

“Is the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen in love with Hawkeye?” The boot pressed further against his neck, and he struggled to stay inside his brain, keep reciting his amendments-

 

_...peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. Amendment II. A well regulated Militia… _

 

Cigars let out a harsh guffaw. “Well, isn’t that a treat! I suppose I’ll just have to keep you then. We don’t have all night, after all.”

 

Daredevil couldn’t think. Everything  _ hurt. _ He couldn’t allow himself to be kidnapped. He was the fucking Devil of Hell’s Kitchen, and he would not be kidnapped.

 

Except, well, he didn’t have a choice when the butt of the gun came down one last time across his head and the world around him blacked out. 

 

\-------

 

Daredevil raised his head from where he was chained to the chair rather unceremoniously. Whatever room he was in was filled with that stupid pungent gas that was blocking his hearing and scent, and he only had patchy memories of what had happened- being dragged into a van, Cigars tying him to a chair, lifting one corner of the mask before deciding against it. At least he hadn’t found out who he was.

 

Maybe he was using it for blackmail later.

 

Chained to a goddamn fucking chair. What even.

 

He realized he was hyperventilating only after the fact, shallow breaths coming fast and hard. Tried desperately to pull himself out of it.  _ Amendment III. No soldier- _ soldier, like Frank Castle, chaining him to a rooftop, like Stick, teaching him through punches and through pain and through halfhearted excuses to the nuns about why his arm was broken or why his neck was mottled with bruises. A soldier like him. Raised to be a soldier. Was he a soldier? Was Clint?

 

He couldn’t hear even the chains rattling anymore, or his own harsh breaths; he opened his mouth in a scream that scraped at his throat, but that he couldn’t hear  _ anything, _ and he found himself muffled in a void of his own making-

 

There was a hand on his shoulder, then, and he turned to lash at it, but his hands were still chained behind him. Everything  _ hurt  _ and he screamed again, louder, longer. Couldn’t hear anything.

 

And then he could- something was happening, something with a whirring sound, and the pungent scent was leaving the room and he could  _ hear  _ again. Slowly, the room returned to the flames. He could smell again and hear his captor’s heartbeat, faster than usual. 

 

Saying soothing words. What the fuck.

 

“Shh, shh,” Cigars was saying. One hand was cupping the back of his head and the other was on his chest now. “Calm down. It’s all right now, calm down. You’re going to be okay.”

 

“You’re not gonna- fucking  _ psycho- _ not gonna fucking get shit out of me,” Daredevil grunted. His wrists strained against the chains keeping him tied to the chair, heart beating out of his chest, nerves firing impulses of lightning up to his head.. There were tears now, dripping down his cheeks, but getting caught under the cowl. He couldn’t  _ breathe. _

 

“Just match your breathing to mine.” He sounded  _ concerned. _ Daredevil wanted to kick him, and totally would have if his legs weren’t still chained. “We both know I’m going to hurt you whether or not you freak out, don’t bother having a panic attack about it. Can you see now? Are you better? Come on, deep breaths. You can do it.”

 

Daredevil snarled, “Get the fuck off of me.” He was tired, and shaky, and really did not fucking want to be on this chair right then. But he had his senses back.

 

Which meant he could start picking the lock on the chains, if he could find one. So good news! Because his captor had a heart, he might not be stuck here for life and/or until Hawkeye or Spider-Man or, God forbid, the  _ Punisher _ found him. 

 

“You see,” Cigars started.

 

“Monologue time?” Daredevil asked, cocking his head. He dropped the gravel voice. No use wearing out his throat while he was tied to a stupid chair. He wasn’t going to intimidate anyone from there. “Oh good, I love it when people reveal all their evil plans.” 

 

He was rewarded by a slap across the face. It barely even hurt anymore; he’d had worse beatings from the doorframe on the way out of the office. 

 

“You  _ see, _ ” Cigars said pointedly, “I think I could use you. How about this? You don’t give me information on Hawkeye, the man who killed all of my workers, I film me removing your stupid devil horns and put it on live TV.”

 

Daredevil’s heart went from 80 beats per minute to 140 so fast it wasn’t funny. “How about we don’t.”

 

“You see, Daredevil,” Cigars said, apparently not listening to him, “er- can I call you Dare? Devil? Lucifer? Is there a name you’d prefer to go by? Your real one, perhaps?”

 

Daredevil stayed silent until he heard Cigars carrying something that tasted of metal in the air. Not a gun. Something rectangular.. something- shit. A camera.

 

Plausible name. Plausible name.  _ Calm down. You’re Matthew Michael Murdock, and you’re Foggy Nelson’s best friend, and you’re a protector of Hell’s Kitchen, and you’re… _

 

“Jackson,” he offered. “My name is Jackson.”

 

The man seemed satisfied with this answer, setting down the camera. “Jackson. Michael Jackson? Like the singer.”   
  


_ No. _ “Yeah.” He laughed, a rougher sound than he usually produced, and cracked his patented devilish grin. “‘Cept I can’t sing worth shit, an’ my name’s not Michael. I just told you that.”

 

_ Come on, Matt. Pretend you’re as badass as Karen and as rugged as Frank and as smart as Foggy.  _

 

“I assumed as much when you refused to get Hawkeye. Just embarrassed, then, Jackson?”

 

“Sure.” Better excuse than the truth Cigars had figured out. 

 

“Hm. All right. What can you tell me about the Spider-Man?” Cigars walked over and crouched close to him. 

 

Half-truths. He could do this. “He’s very insistent on the hyphen. Spider, hyphen, man. Got an official email, too.”

 

“Everyone knows that. How old’s he?”

 

“None of your fucking business.” Criminals don’t need to know it’s a highschooler kicking their asses. The fingers of his not-slowly-bleeding-out hand fumbled for a lock, but were temporarily distracted by the knee he received to the ribcage.

 

“How old is Spider-Man? Come on, you can tell me. City of, what, two million? Can’t tell me there aren’t at least a hundred thousand people walkin’ around with the same age.”

 

_ Interrogation, stay calm. They’ll get you to answer simple questions so you answer the harder ones later, _ Stick’s voice echoed in his head.

 

“Shut up,” he said, both to Stick and to Cigars. 

 

The meaningful sound of a tripod opening made him exhale again in annoyance. “He’s too young to run for President.”

 

“See, that wasn’t so hard,” Cigars soothed. Daredevil wanted to bite his fingers off, one by one, and then throw the rest of him into a blender. He also wanted to get out of here. 

 

Speaking of here, he could smell seawater nearby, and hear the sounds of a pizza parlor. Maybe one of the piers? 

 

The man started pacing the room. “Now what’s his name?”

  
Daredevil froze.

 

“Come on, all you superheroes have generic names! Stuff like Jackson and Tony and Steve and fuckin’ Clint. His is probably super generic too! Just give me the first initial.”

 

He knew better. He wasn’t going to tell him jack shit. He’d rather have his identity revealed than the identity of a highschooler. The poor kid would be mobbed. He’d be disbarred, sure, and so would Foggy, and Karen would probably be arrested, but…

 

He couldn’t reveal a teenager’s alter ego.

 

So instead he pretended to be woozy- it wasn’t hard, considering that he still felt like he couldn’t breathe right, and his head ached in a million different places, and his hand felt like it was on fire. 

 

All he had to do was stop compartmentalizing the pain.

 

He took a deep breath and let it all in. Immediately, everything  _ hurt, _ a million times worse than it did before, and he fell forward in his bonds, giving a weak cry of pain.

 

“Shit,” Cigars muttered. “F’ya look bad for the camera, people’ll think you fought back.” He felt antiseptic against his hand, then, and it  _ stung  _ to hell. He jerked so violently he was surprised he didn’t dislocate a shoulder on the chains. “Shh, shh. Cool down, you’re all right.”

 

Huh. Maybe the guy just had a soft spot for people in need. But evidently not fucking  _ him, _ because that antiseptic stung like a bitch. He could feel his hand starting to bleed freely again. “Come on,” Cigars said. “You’re all right. It’s okay, we’re gonna be just fine. I’m just gonna bandage you up, all right? M’gonna pull your glove off and bandage you up.”

 

Ah, and here was the ingenuity Daredevil hadn’t known was in his own plan. Nevertheless, he was thankful for it. Because his glove didn’t just… pull off. There was a catch to release it. And if the man spent his time looking for the catch and not trying to reveal Daredevil’s identity to the public, then he could spend more time figuring out where they were. 

 

_Amendment I. Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances._

 

He took a deep breath. He could taste salt overwhelmingly, and it wasn’t from the room; could hear men outside having a smoke break. If he concentrated, he could hear the little flurries of a fish’s heartbeat. Many fishes’ heartbeats. But the city still felt like Hell’s Kitchen- the same undertones of flickering lights and violence that other boroughs didn’t- so he could safely assume he was probably by the pier. 

 

Okay, time to figure out which one. He inhaled deeply, focusing on cutting out the odd sensation of the man behind him feeling around his hand and arm; he couldn’t smell the undercurrent of explosives that always resided at Pier 81, or the scent of dogs that hung around Pier 84, or hear the chatter of Pier 86. That narrowed it down a little.

 

He couldn’t hear the Lincoln Tunnel, though- it was always a telltale sound on the southern side. Probably past Pier 88, then.  _ Pier 89, what was on Pier 89?  _ Right- that clothing store. He inhaled for the scent of freshly ironed clothes, listened hard for the chime of a cash register. He didn’t hear one. He knew there was a Holiday Inn Express by Piers 92 and 94, and he listened.

 

Sure enough, he could hear, though it was quiet and muffled, the sound of a receptionist talking on a phone, establishing some sort of payment plan. 

 

Pier 92 or 94. That was a good place to start. 

 

\-----

 

Cigars gave up with the glove, citing “annoying superheroes and their damn costume choices.” Daredevil didn’t mind, not really- his hand  _ hurt,  _ hurt to all hell, but he would be fine as long as it didn’t get infected. The antiseptic he put on would help with that.

 

What  _ was  _ an issue was the fact that Cigars was taking out his aggression on Daredevil. He had seemingly forgotten the idea of not hitting the Devil in the face to make his humiliation work, so blood was streaming from his nose now, and his lip was cut open. 

 

“STUPID FUCKING VIGILANTES!” Cigars was screaming, and he wondered not for the first time why this guy had such a cult following if this was how he acted all the time. Then he took a boot to the stomach, and he had to focus on that instead, because he was not going to vomit all over this man’s floor. He coughed, but managed to keep the bile down.  _Amendment V,_ he told himself, frantic to keep his thoughts in order and his head on straight.  _No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases involving the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in the time of War or of public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without the due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation._

 

“Can we just get this over with?” he said roughly. “It’s clear you need help. I can help you. Let me out, and I can-”

 

The man’s foot collided with his shoulder, and he jerked sideways from the impact, chains jangling. Something heavy fell into his hand, changed from further up the chain. 

 

The padlock.

 

Cigars was pacing now. “Yes. I did promise you consequences if you didn’t answer me.”

 

Daredevil had kind of forgotten about that part. He focused on unhooking his torn glove, and pulling the tiny sewing needle from inside. It was harder than he’d imagined, and the pain kept making him stop, so he wouldn’t show it on his face. In this case, the promise of escape outweighed the possibility of having his secret revealed.

 

He kept pulling at his glove.

 

A loud sound passed nearby. Some sort of boat. 

 

With a final  _ yank,  _ his hands closed around the pin and pulled. The whir of electricity reminded him there was a camera in front of him, which was now live and rolling.

 

Daredevil lifted his head in what he hoped was a defiant manner, though it was mostly to show off the bruises and blood on his face. Behind him, his fingers worked to pick the lock, waiting for the quiet  _ thuk  _ of the tumblers falling into place.

 

Cigars was in front of the camera now. “People of Hell’s Kitchen and people of New York! This is your hero.  _ This  _ is your Daredevil. You see him now, reduced to this, stuck in a simple chair, because he decided that his  _ friends  _ were more important than his life.”

 

“You should take up communications,” Daredevil gritted out. “Get a college education. You’ve got a flair for the dramatic.”

  
“And now-”

 

“Pier 84,” he said, as loudly as he could, even though the  _ p _ stung when his cut lip met the other. “His hideout is at Pier 84.” He’d found out when he heard the loud noise pass, the unmistakable sound of a cruise ship- people laughing, drinking, babies crying. The scent of money. 

 

“And,” Cigars continued, undeterred by Daredevil’s interruption- really, his call for help- “Now you’ll see him in all his glory. Unmasked. Chained. This is your hero, Hell’s Kitchen. This is your hero, New York. He ruined his own life to save two of his friends. So to Spider-Man and to Hawkeye, I hope you’re watching.” The movement of air told Daredevil he’d spread his hands wide in a sort of closing gesture.

 

_ Thuk. _

 

“Yeah,” Daredevil added, his face splitting into a bloody, toothy grin. “You’ll see the Devil in all his glory.”

 

He let the chains fall and leapt from the chair, delivering a sharp few hits-  _ jab, jab, roundhouse.  _ He kept his bleeding hand near his face defensively as he felled the man.

 

Then he turned to the camera- at least, he assumed it was a camera- and flashed it that same grin. “Now,” he continued, “if you’re a hero or a vigilante who wants to be a good friend and get me out of here, you know my location. If you’re a criminal who wants to take a pot shot at me while I have one hand tied, you know it, too.”

 

He pushed the corners of his bleeding lips further up, twisting his grin into something sickening.

 

“So come and get me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wonder how Clint feels about all this? >:)
> 
> Also, just as a heads up- I'm taking four days off, as of tomorrow, for a band trip. Since I have April break afterward, I don't think it should affect too much, but I'm not sure how long the next chapter will take, so Clint Chap 4 might have a weird update time.


	9. Clint- Chapter 4

_ So come and get me. _

 

The words rang in Clint’s ears as he gunned the engine of his motorbike faster than ever before, swerving around the usual late-night traffic. Cars clogged the streets, but mostly because nearly all of them had paused in the middle of driving in order to watch as the Devil took out Hawkeye’s mob boss on live TV.

 

Matt was hurt  _ because  _ of Clint. He’d managed to take down every single member of the guy’s group. But he didn’t realize there was a guy higher-up than the higher-ups, until Matt was kicking the shit out of him and then grinning at the camera- no, that wasn’t a word that could be used for it. It wasn’t a grin. It was something genuinely, bone-chillingly terrifying, even despite the stupidity that was the suit in light. And then Matt had smashed the camera. It was kind of hot but also, more than that,  _ really fucking scary. _

 

He sped up even faster, swerving vehicles in his rush. Brooklyn was a nightmare to navigate at night, but Manhattan was worse. He wondered if his life couldn’t be made easier by just parkouring his way there.

 

But that would fatigue him and leave him no way to get Matt home, so he kept moving on the motorbike. Eventually, when the cars got too-well-packed to swerve, he drove on the sidewalk. 

 

\------

 

Hawkeye spotted the smaller vigilante the second he got there. Spider-Man, pacing outside of a door. As he drew nearer, he noticed that it was the black one, not the red one. He clearly wasn’t the only one from Brooklyn who’d come to take their chance at helping one of their Manhattan buddies.

 

He glanced up as Hawkeye arrived. “The place is alarmed. And I’m pretty sure it’s got traps of some sort- probably a bomb. My senses won’t let me go in.”

 

Hawkeye nodded once. “Well, I’m going to take my chances.”   
  


“I’m not letting you go through the door,” the kid said. “You could get him hurt.”

 

“I’m not going in through the door,” Clint sighed. He grabbed onto the bricks and climbed up the side of the building, then located what he was looking for- a ventilation shaft. Good. He took his helmet off and tossed it to the ground; it landed perfectly over one handlebar on his motorbike.  _ Hah. Not just good with a bow. _

 

“I’m coming in with you,” Spider-Man declared.

 

Clint did quick mental calculations. Spider-Man was probably mid-teens, tops. No way he was any older than 17. Probably closer to 15 or 16.

 

“Sure,” Clint agreed. “But first, I need to make sure nobody else comes in. Can you stay out here, instead, and make sure nobody comes and attacks?”

 

“Got it,” Spidey nodded. Clint grinned. Kids were easy- you just told them they were getting what they wanted, and then worked around that to get what  _ you  _ wanted. He knew it wouldn’t work one day, but sue him, he was gonna use the trick until it failed. 

 

The vents were small.  _ Tiny,  _ really, and Clint was forced to take his bow off his back and hold it out in front of him so that he could wriggle through the claustrophobic space. Matt could definitely hear the clanging through the vents.

 

“Double D,” he said aloud, “Spider-Man thinks there’s some sort of explosives in here. I’m in the vents so that I don’t trigger those. Can you make a noise to let me know where you are?”   
  


There was a long pause, then a yell- not one of pain, but instead a wordless call. 

 

Clint took off towards it as best he could, squirming through the vents. The guy had looked horrible on camera- most people weren’t paying attention to it, but the bloody teeth weren’t just for the aesthetic, they were because his lip was split open. Clint had noticed the edge of a bruise peeking from under his helmet. 

 

“I’m on my way,” he said aloud. He was pretty sure he was only reassuring himself.

 

\-----

 

The room Matt was in was dark and dingy, with a single light on over the chair with chains. There was nothing in the room aside from the ventilation shaft, which Clint popped through in a second.

 

Matt was on the floor, leaning against a wall. He looked up as Clint entered; his mask was off, and he had a bad case of helmet hair. Sightless eyes gazed straight ahead, but his head tracked Clint’s movements. 

 

“Hey,” Clint said. “Come on, I got you. We’re gonna get out of here.”   
  


“You can go,” Matt said. “I’m not going anywhere.” He gestured to the room. “None of my friends could make it- too busy. No way out for me. The vents are too small. I can’t get out.”

 

“What are you saying? That I should just, what? Leave you here to die, just ‘cause you’re a few inches taller than I am?”   
  


Matt shrugged with one arm. “Yeah, pretty much. I figured- most of NYC’s vigilantes are too busy to rescue me, but the criminals’ll do anything to find me. So I figure hey, if one of them leaves a hole behind them, I can get out, but if I can’t I’ll take down a bunch with me.”

 

“That’s some fucked-up logic,” Clint argued. “So what? Were you just gonna let people deal with your death? You know as well as I do that when a vigilante dies it leaves a  _ lot  _ of loose strings untied. Plus, your real-life shit? You’re a hero because you’re Matt Murdock, not just because you’re Daredevil, you know?”   
  


Matt sighed. Let his head thunk back against the wall. “I’m not sure I was thinking about the aftermath. I’m  _ trapped, _ Clint.”

 

Clint wasn’t sure whether he meant physically or mentally. “I can get you out.”

 

“What are you gonna do? Blow a hole through the wall?”

 

“Wouldn’t that be hell on your ears?” Clint asked. “I have explosive arrows if that’s what you want. What I  _ do  _ have, though, is a laser cutter. Much better on the, uh, neighborly noise complaints.”   
  


Matt didn’t say anything, but he allowed Clint to help him to his feet as he pulled out the device- he kept it in a pocket in case he was arrested or, you know. Something like this ever happened.

 

He set the disk on the wall and pulled the string from it, using it to draw the circle with the laser on the wall. Then, before he finished, he grabbed a suction arrow and stuck it to the section of wall. Just in case there was a pressure detector on the other side, he didn’t want a chunk of the wall falling onto it.

 

He yanked the circle of drywall off to one side and glanced sideways at Daredevil. “Smell any explosives?”

 

Daredevil looked uneasy. “Yeah. Mostly behind us; there’s none in the hallway in front of us.”

 

“How far from the outside?”

 

“Just through that wall, I think. But it’s load-bearing. Watch out.”

 

“Got it,” Clint said, melding easily into the "partners" mold. Matt seemed good at it, too; he seamlessly took up the mantle of lookout, watching to make sure nobody was following. “I have Brooklyn’s Spider-Man standing guard.”

 

“I can hear him,” Daredevil nodded as Clint drew the circle on the wall again and let it fall. “You done?”   
  
“Good to go,” Clint confirmed. He pocketed the cutter and glanced up. “It’s not gonna fall?”   
  


“Not yet,” Daredevil said. “Come on.” 

 

They crawled through the hole and out onto the pier. Spider-Man glanced up from the three enemies he was holding back. “Hey, the cavalry’s here!”

 

“Yeah, and this one’s not fighting anyone, he’s hurt.”

 

“M’not hurt,” Daredevil corrected.

 

“Yeah, and the limp’s just a trick of the light, huh? Get on my bike, grab a spare helmet from the seat, and stay down while I handle this.” Clint pulled his bow from his back and thanked everything in the sky that he’d taken a recurve; the compound bow was too complicated to deal with at near-point-blank, facing a few criminals. 

 

Speaking of. He pulled a normal arrow from the “normal” quiver he’d slung over his left shoulder (as opposed to the “fancy” quiver over his right shoulder that had all the fun arrows) and fired into one’s leg. The other two whipped around as the first collapsed- he dubbed the fallen one Skyrim- because of the arrow to the knee- and the other two could be Jim and Joe. He punched Jim with the hand not holding the bow, then turned and caught Joe upside the head with his bow. 

 

The bow didn’t shatter on Joe’s chin, so he considered that a success. He fired at Jim, then nocked another arrow with one hand to fire at Joe. 

 

But Jim- or was it Joe? Dammit, whoever it was, hadn’t quite fallen, and Hawkeye had only grazed his arm, and Joe (Jim?) was approaching fast from the other side, and one managed to get a punch out across his jaw-

 

And then one was falling to the floor and whoop, the other was too. Spiderman was behind them with a fist still raised in the air from where he’d punched the second out.

 

“You okay? I think Double D passed out.”   
  


“I’m not surprised,” Clint groaned, standing up from the defensive crouch he’d put himself in. “The media hasn’t cottoned on to his injuries yet, but I’m pretty certain everyone else in the known universe has. I can patch him up.”

 

“You sure?” Spider-Man asked, sounding very unsure. “He’s kinda touchy about people seeing his-”

 

“Been there, done that,” Clint said as he buckled his own helmet on (Kate had made it to match hers and he’d never admit it, but he loved it to bits) and sat behind Daredevil, his own hands on the handlebars. “Got the blood on my knife to prove it.”

 

“You managed to get a hit on him?” Spidey sounded impressed. “I tried once. It didn’t go well.”

 

“Try holy water,” Clint advised, because Spider-Man was a kid and probably pretty damn gullible. Sure enough, Spidey’s eyes widened.

 

“Woah.”   
  


“Demons, man,” was all Clint had to say before driving off, Matt lying limply across the handlebars.

 

\------

 

The closest medical facility he could think of that wasn’t going to ask questions or take the guy’s mask off was Avengers Tower. So he hauled the Devil up into the elevator, careful not to catch his feet in the door, and asked J to deliver them to the medical wing and to get a nurse down there, stat. 

 

Then, on second thought, Clint added, “Engage privacy protocol, level: Black Widow.” Which meant the highest level of security, followed by Nick Fury, followed by Spider-Man, blah, blah, blah. 

 

Clint delivered Matt onto the stretcher that was already there (thank God for Doctor Booker, who was the best human alive and promised Clint that nobody else would be present aside from the two of them when they checked Matt for head wounds.) He helped her unbuckle the suit from around Matt, finding the near-invisible buckles with the practice of someone who didn’t know Matt’s suit, but whose usual costume involved near-invisible buckles very much like Matt’s near-invisible buckles. Together, they managed to get the costume off of him.

 

“Thank God he was wearing the suit,” Dr. Booker declared as soon as they got it over his head. “He’d be dead otherwise.” She started cleaning out the scrapes and bruises across the left side of his torso. Clint nodded numbly. 

 

“That’s, uh, Daredevil for you. He never asks for help. When he told vigilantes, too, not just criminals to come after him? I knew something was up.”

 

Dr. Booker hummed acknowledgment. “Most of you do the same. I’m not surprised. Can you help me get his helmet off?”

 

Clint paused. “J, turn off recording for the next half hour in this room.”

 

“ _ I’m not sure- _ ”

 

“Please. Override code AVENGERS, unless you need me to spell it out for you?”   
  


J gave a robotic, tinny sigh. “ _ All recording in the room has been paused for 30 minutes. _ ”

 

Clint nodded once. Began to pull off the unconscious man’s helmet. 

 

The not-as-unconscious-as-Clint-thought man’s hands flew up to catch Clint’s. “Let me. You trust the-?”

 

“Yeah,” Clint said, and it was, evidently, all Matt needed, because the mask was off in another second.

 

“Forewarning,” Matt said, trying to get up and failing miserably (mostly because Clint was shoving him back down, the idiot.) “I’m no light perception. Pretty sure I’m not concussed, I tend to go deaf when I’m-  _ ow- _ concussed.” He shoved Clint’s hand off the bruise he’d accidentally pushed when trying to push Matt back down. Oops. Clint still kept a warning hand on his shoulder, definitely as a warning about getting up and not because he really wanted to touch Matt and also Matt was leaning into it anyway so  _ who really cared. _

 

“Duly noted,” Dr. Booker said, seeming amused. She wiped away some crusted-over blood on his temple and examined the cut. “You look like you got hit. A lot, really.”

 

“Recently?” Matt clarified. “That might be the marks from when he hit me with his gun. Less recently? Could be anything, really.”

 

She muttered something that Clint didn’t hear but Matt definitely heard, judging by the way he quirked one side of his mouth upward. “Yeah, you’re probably right.” 

 

“Okay,” she sighed. “Can I get you to take some pain meds? An Advil?”

 

“I can do Advil. Anything stronger and I get all fuzzy up here,” Matt said. Clint concentrated very hard on Dr. Booker’s face and not the way Matt was smiling kind of dorkily and very adorably even though he had mask hair and his head was probably swelling in ten different places. 

 

“How many times were you hit in the head?”

 

Matt paused. “Three times with his gun. Probably twelve with his fists and five with his open hand.”

 

Clint winced. That sounded  _ bad,  _ especially for people like them who didn’t have a super-secret healing ability or whatever.

 

“And you’re sure you don’t have a concussion?” Clint was sure he sounded skeptical, but sue him if he didn’t really believe Matt with the impressive roster of pain he’d just listed off.

 

“I don’t hear my brain swelling. And I can still hear you. Both of which are good signs that lead towards no concussion.”

 

Well, that was a definitive answer. Dr. Booker looked taken aback for a second by the blunt, matter-of-fact nature of the statement. “Okay. Okay, we can work with that. Hardheaded in both senses of the term.” She grabbed some antibiotics. “You heard that you’d be dead without the suit on, right?”   
  


“Not my proudest moment,” he admitted, and Clint could see a muscle in his jaw jump as she applied the antibiotic to an open wound- probably biting back the pain. “I could have taken him, but he had… I don’t know. Some sort of gas. It muted my senses, even though it was evidently only made to blind me.”   
  


“But you were already blind, so it tried out other areas of the brain?” Clint guessed. 

 

“I don’t know. It smelled strong and felt like it was settling in my lungs. I really hope nobody saw me bumbling around.”

 

It was a good attempt to pass his pain off as humor, Clint could give him that. But the sober look on his face wasn’t fooling anybody, and Clint just kept his hand on Matt’s shoulder and let the nurse handle the wounds.

 

A few minutes later, without warning, Daredevil shoved the nurse’s hand away.

 

“What-?” she started, but Matt didn’t seem to care. He reached blindly (ha ha) for his helmet and fit it over his head right before Tony walked in the room.

 

“Stark,” Matt greeted icily. “Can’t even leave a devil to get patched up in peace.” Clint took the hand off Matt’s shoulder, feeling like a kid caught holding a cookie jar.   
  


“Don’t turn off the cameras, next time, Nelson,” he retorted. Daredevil actually flinched at this one.

 

“Nelson?” He sounded genuinely bewildered. 

 

“Don’t play dumb with me,  _ Franklin. _ I know who you are. You weren’t subtle about it.”

 

Matt actually let out a short bark of laughter before turning to Clint for an explanation.

 

“He thinks you’re one of the triad who took down Fisk,” Clint explained, trying not to crack up. “You know, Nelson, Murdock, and Page? He reckons that you’re not Page because you’re a guy, and you’re not Murdock because he’s blind-” He actually had to pause and choke down a peal of laughter at that one. “So you gotta be Nelson.”

 

“Christ,” Daredevil grumbled out. “I’m not Franklin Nelson. You didn’t even do your research right. You know I talked with them, right? Gave them evidence?”

 

“Yes, which is  _ why- _ ”

 

“He doesn’t reply to Franklin. He’ll only respond to Foggy,” Daredevil said. “And I respond to  _ neither  _ name. Because I’m not Nelson. Also, I’m not staying. Thanks, miss, I’ll do the rest on my own.”

 

“At least take the damn Advil!” Dr. Booker yelled as Matt pulled the top back on, buckled it in literally half a second (damn, man, what?) and leapt out the window. Again.

 

“I’m following him,” Clint said without further explanation. And jumped out the window after him. Because the man was in an awful mental state the last time he’d checked, and Clint wasn’t letting him go home alone after that.

 

So he followed Daredevil through the city, using his grapple arrows to the best of his agility when he couldn’t follow the blind ninja’s expert parkour and fantastic knowledge of the area. The man was fantastic at it, really; he’d never met anyone as good at it as he was, and here was Daredevil, who outclassed him by  _ so  _ much he didn’t know how he was still keeping up. 

 

The path they were taking was suddenly recognizable to him; they were in Hell’s Kitchen, probably headed for Matt’s apartment. The type of buildings had dropped visibly in value; clotheslines popping up between buildings; dingy alleyways the constant. 

 

Matt knew Clint was following him now; that much was obvious. He was pausing more often, and wasn’t doing it to catch his breath; probably just to let Clint catch up. It was thoughtful in an odd way.

 

He hesitated before following Matt into the building, though. Even if he’d been in there once before, it felt… invasive, almost, to follow into another vigilante’s space, especially one who was as well-guarded as Daredevil.

 

Clint followed, though. 

 

He kept his mouth shut about the bare walls that he was noticing now, and didn’t comment while Matt changed quickly in his bathroom. It was near-silent the entire time. Clint’s head, though, was not- it kept remembering the bet, that he had to ask Matt out by the end of the week, or risk the firm’s privacy curtain being ripped away. He couldn’t let that happen. SHIELD was too prone to leaks for that to be allowed to happen. But the way he’d seen Matt in that warehouse, so ready to give up and let himself be killed by a bunch of villains- so  _ at peace  _ with the decision he’d given himself- that… shook him a little, honestly.

 

So when Matt came back out of the bathroom in a soft-looking Columbia hoodie and sweatpants, Clint sat down on the couch. “I gotta talk to you.”

 

“If this is about-”

 

“It’s not. It’s not about what happened at my apartment, but we  _ will  _ talk about that.” He wondered if he was promising that to Matt or if he was promising that to himself. “The, uh, video.”

 

“What about it?” Matt’s voice shook, and he took his glasses off to twist them between his fingers.

 

“You… well, first of all, what you did in there was. Really,  _ really  _ impressive,” Clint started. “But… why the hell would you just assume that since your Manhattan friends were busy that nobody was gonna come running for you? And what the hell were they so busy with that they  _ didn’t?” _

 

“Deadpool’s off-planet,” he started. “Manhattan’s Spidey is dealing with personal stuff. Cage is off in Harlem somewhere, I haven’t heard from Jones in a week and a half, and Rand is off tying up some loose ends from when he dealt with a terrorist group last month. Frank’s off trying to get better and reform himself, I hope. They didn’t abandon me. They’re just… busy.”

 

Clint nodded. Honestly, that wasn’t the part of the question he was most interested in, though. “Okay, and you just assumed that there weren’t other vigilantes like Blindspot or Misty or Moon or Brooklyn’s Spidey or, hell,  _ me  _ that were gonna come and help? Hell, I’m fairly sure the fucking Avengers would’ve helped if you asked them to.” His voice was calm, but he was pretty sure his heart rate was betraying his concern. “You have more friends than just Team Red and the Defenders. Even your  _ real-life  _ friends, Matt.”

 

Matt’s face was angled towards his hands, almost as if in shame. “Yeah.”

 

Clint paused. “You don’t believe that.”

 

Matt was silent for a second. “No- no, rationally, I believe you, but…”

 

“But your brain isn’t really letting you believe it,” Clint finished for him. “Matt, you need  _ therapy. _ ”

 

“I already have a priest,” Matt said. The corner of his lip twitched upwards. 

 

Clint let out a sigh. Of course he’d say that. “Come on, man, you know I mean real therapy. The kind where you sit back in a chair and let someone diagnose you with the depression you’ve probably had since you were a kid. Seems to be a running thing with most heroes.”

 

Matt rubbed the first knuckle on his hand with his thumb. “...Look, I’ll think about it. You’re probably right. But right now…”

 

“Yeah.” Clint nodded. He wasn’t sure Matt was gonna follow through, but… at least a conversation had been opened about it. “Okay. To our next topic! The apartment.”

 

“Oh my God,” Matt said, covering his face with his hands. “No no no, we’re not- we’re not talking about that.”   
  


“You can’t get away from it,” Clint grinned. “Sorry. It’s happening.”

 

Matt groaned into his hands. “I’m sorry, look, it was the most embarrassing attempt at-”   
  


“But we should talk about this over dinner?”

 

Matt’s head shot up. “Something’s wrong with my super-hearing, because I know you didn’t just say that.”

 

“What, dinner? Let’s make it a date.”

 

Matt scowled. “Stop teasing me.” It was… annoyingly cute.

 

“I’m not, though!” Clint laughed, then sobered. “Okay. I have to be a hundred percent truthful with you, I wasn’t going to ask this fast. I probably would have kept skirting my shitty crush for about a million years and then just died alone, but, uh. Tony and I kind of made a bet?”

 

Matt dropped his head onto the table. “Oh god.”

 

Clint winced. “And, uh, said bet might have played a little with your secret identity? Okay- okay- hang  _ on-”  _ he exclaimed defensively, waving his hands around as Matt lunged for him and pinned him against the couch with his forearm, which would have been hot if it wasn’t  _ absurdly terrifying _ . “Not like that, he was planning to investigate you and I told him that if I could get a date with you by the end of the week he would have to stop investigating you and Nelson and Page, okay?” 

 

Matt paused and let go of Clint’s shirt, sitting back on the other end of the couch. A strand of hair flicked up, an adorable cowlick of sorts. “So you’re not planning to sell me out?”

 

“No. And- and trust me, I’m asking you out of my own free will, I’m not lying, listen!” Clint exclaimed. “Just- just trust me.”

 

A moment passed. “I believe you,” he said. “Where and when?”

 

Clint paused. “Uh, my place on… Tuesday night?”

 

Matt thought for a second. “I can free up Tuesday night. I was planning to bust some gunrunners on Tuesday, but I can do that Thursday instead.”

 

“Oooor,” Clint said, drawing the word out on purpose. “We could eat the dinner and  _ then  _ go bust some gunrunners together.”

 

“That sounds like a plan,” Matt said, and the grin that lit up his face was enough to make Clint’s heart thump so loud he was  _ certain  _ Matt could hear it.

 

And there, with the ghost of blood on Matt’s lip and the glint of the billboard outside lighting up the room, Clint knew everything was going to be all right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Second-to-last chapter!!! Next up is the epilogue, then I'm done with this fic. 
> 
> To be honest, I thought it would be longer, but I'm not upset about it; I think this rounds things off pretty well. Plus, considering it's the first fic I've finished and published without a coauthor, I'm pretty proud of it! Feel free to drop your comments below :)


	10. Matt- Epilogue

The room was dim, with no working lightbulbs, but it was lit by peals of laughter that were brighter than any fluorescent bulbs Matt remembered from before the accident. 

 

The table was loaded with good food- a gift from the owners of an Italian restaurant, who had thanked them for the firm’s assistance in a case by sending them home with enough food to last Clint and Matt a week. So they’d recruited help- Karen, Foggy, Peter, Nat, and Kate joined them at the table, and from the sound of it, Peter was doing his best to singlehandedly eat the entire spread.

  
“Teenagers and their appetites,” Nat was saying. Fondness filled her voice, and the lack of underlying stress or tension made Matt smile. 

 

“S’ goo’ foo’, “ Peter said around a mouthful of spaghetti. 

 

“Clint’s making a face,” Foggy narrated. “So is Kate. They’re impressively in sync.”   
  


Matt grinned. “Of course they are.”

 

He felt the air move near his shoulder and let Clint drape an arm around him. “How much of this champagne have you had?” he asked.

 

Clint made a noise Matt couldn’t identify. “Ugh, enough.”

 

“Twelve glasses,” Nat answered.

 

“Eat your meatballs, you animal.” It was directed at Clint, mostly, but he didn’t mind if the whole table took the instructions. He stabbed one of his own demonstratively and ate it. “B’sides, they’re good!”

 

Peter, meanwhile, was trying to keep Kate from assaulting his plate with the parmesan. “No- Kate-  _ no,  _ I don’t care how good cheese is, I’ve already had meatballs with this, I can’t have cheese on top of it!” From the sound of things, Karen intervened, because there was the gentle sound of particles on fabric- probably cheese if the accompanying smell was to be trusted- and the bump of plastic against skin. 

 

“Oh! I completely forgot to turn the oven off!” Foggy yelped, and got up to turn it off. 

 

“Out of sight, out of mind,” Peter said. “At least it didn’t burn anything down.”

 

Matt gave a dry chuckle. “Does that mean I don’t have to worry about anything? Because that sounds like bliss right about now, let me tell you,  _ Kate- _ stop trying to poison Peter with unkosher food. Just because I can’t see it doesn’t mean I don’t know it’s happening.”

 

Nat chuckled at the joke. Kate grumbled and set the parmesan down again as Foggy returned to the table; the screeching sound of a chair being pulled out assaulted his ears, and he winced without realizing it. “Sorry,” Foggy mumbled.

 

“S’not your fault. We should add tennis balls to the bottoms of the chairs, like they do in the classroom, you know?” Peter suggested, and Matt remembered he had super-senses too.

 

“They do what?” Karen asked. “Why would they put tennis balls on the bottom of the chair?” 

 

“Not, like, on the chair itself,” he hastened to explain. “but on the legs of the chair. It looks really ugly but it keeps them  _ really  _ quiet and it’s so much better on my ears.”

 

Nat made a contemplative noise, and Kate nodded. “Yeah. They do it at the prep school, too.”

 

“Ugh,  _ prep school. _ ”

 

“Peter’s making a face, all scrunched up- his eyebrows look like they’re about to touch his nose,” Foggy narrated for him. Matt grinned, and was pleasantly surprised at the accelerated heart rate it gave Clint. The sound of a gentle punch resonated around the room, and peals of laughter as Foggy made indignant noises. “ _ Ow,  _ jeez, dude! You were making a face! Matt couldn’t see it.”

 

“Oh no, my senses have mysteriously disappeared and I can’t tell you’re sticking your tongue out at me,” Matt deadpanned in the direction of Peter.

 

“Well, my senses are perfectly intact and I can tell you that he is very much sticking his tongue out at you. Also, since my eyes are perfectly intact too, I can tell you that you’re very pretty when you make that weird pouty face.”

 

“Boys,” Nat said, but she sounded amused, so Matt didn’t take it as a sign that she was going to kill him. He would probably live for another day.

 

“Objection, too damn cute for the dinner table?” Foggy complained.

 

“Overruled,” Matt and Clint said at the same time. Clint had long since caught on to the general gist of how their objection-overruled-or-sustained game went, and they were allowing him to participate on the basis of “he’s going to do it anyway, why not.”

 

\-----

 

Peter had had to go home (“I have homework, guys, sorry,”) and Kate followed him out; Karen left in a huff after Frank texted asking for emergency stitches and Foggy ran after her so that she wouldn’t be killed. Nat had… vanished, at some point. He wasn’t going to question it.

 

Which left Clint and Matt alone, cleaning up the plates. There was too much food for the two to eat on their own, anyway.

 

“We should do a patrol after this,” Clint said conversationally as he scrubbed something down behind Matt, who was on drying duty. Matt didn’t have a dishwasher in his apartment, which meant they had to do everything by hand, which made it about a thousand times worse.

 

“Looking for anything in particular, or just street crime?”

 

“Street crime,” he said. “We need an off night from the Skillings case, and you took a bit of damage to your leg last time.”

 

“No I didn’t,” Matt lied.

 

“Liar.”

 

“Mmm, maybe so. You always could read me like an open book.”

 

Clint nodded. “Also, I was thinking we could check out that empty warehouse that the vigilante crimespotting site was super suspicious of?”

 

“Works for me,” Matt said. He rubbed down another plate. “You want to stay at my place afterward?”

 

“Yeah. Yeah, that sounds good. Plus, uh, bonus activities, or..?” He sounded hopeful, and Matt let out an amused puff of air through his nose.

 

“If we don’t get the shit beaten out of us,” he suggested. 

 

Clint made some sort of head motion behind him; he could hear the crinkle of fabric, the gentle fold of skin. “Uh, I just nodded. It sounds fair.”

 

They worked in comfortable silence for a moment side-by-side, until Clint broke it. 

 

“There’s a new trophy on the bookstand. What’s it for?”

 

“Oh, uh.” Matt felt himself go red, heard the blood rush to his cheeks. “Uh. Stark gave it to me, for the quote-unquote ‘best excuse for not being a vigilante.’ I had to rescue Fogs from the Avengers while suited up before they got the hint that he really and truly was not Daredevil.”

 

Clint laughed, a bright sound that- even after six months- left him with a bright feeling in his chest.

 

“Sorry. Tony’s like that.”

 

“I’d gathered that, funnily enough,” he chuckled, hitting Clint with the slightly-damp towel. 

 

“Oi!” He was flicked by soapy water in return, spattering across his glasses. 

 

“Rude. You know, when you flick water over my glasses, I can’t see anything out of them? You’re so rude,” Matt joked.

 

“Sorr-” Clint paused halfway, then burst out cackling. “Matt, you can’t see anything anyway!”

 

“Wow, really! I hadn’t noticed! What a revolutionary concept, Matt Murdock being blind! What’s next, you’re gonna tell me I’ve got a nose?”

 

“You keep getting it broken and that might not be true anymore,” Clint pointed out.

 

“That’s not how noses work,” Matt retorted.

 

“Oh, well, ex _ cuse me _ for not being a nose- nasolo- nosolo- noise-” Clint struggled for a second before throwing his hands up in annoyance. “Whatever the fuck!”

 

“A rhinologist?” he suggested.

 

“No, that’s someone who studies rhinos.”

 

“No, I’m pretty sure it’s not.”

 

“Objection, foundation?”

 

“Rhinoceros literally means  _ horn nose,  _ from the Greek  _ rhin- _ for nose and  _ keros  _ for horn. The  _ rhin  _ part is transferred, and  _ ology  _ means study of, of course, so it becomes rhinology.” He paused for dramatic effect as he wiped down a spoon. “Also, Foggy’s cousin is studying to be an otorhinolaryngologist, so she goes on rants about this stuff.”

 

“I’m not even going to pretend I know what that means.”

 

“ _ Otous,  _ ear;  _ rhin,  _ nose;  _ laryn, _ throat,  _ ology, _ study of. She studies the ear, nose, and throat area.” For not the first time, he was thankful Foggy had persuaded him to take a semester of Greek so that he could understand some of the lawyering terms. It came in handy for other things, too.

 

“Huh. The more you know. You’re only reaffirming my knowledge that I picked the smartest boyfriend on Earth.”

 

“Uh, I’m- I’m definitely not the smartest,” Matt said, reddening and ducking his head as he finished the last plate and set it in the rack to be put away later. 

 

“Objection, bullshit!” Before Matt could say anything else, Clint threw open a window and yelled, “MY BOYFRIEND IS THE SMARTEST GODDAMN LAWYER ON EARTH, SUMMA CUM LAUDE FROM COLUMB- _ oof _ ,” he finished, or rather didn’t finish, because Matt was laughing and pulling him back into the room. 

 

“Jesus, Clint,” he said, still laughing embarrassedly as he shut the window. “How much did you drink?”

 

“Only a lot of champagne,” he said, and Matt could hear the smile in Clint’s voice and the unfaltering beat of his heart, a bit heightened (probably from the proximity) but steady with no lie.

 

“Lightweight.”   
  


“I’m only drunk in love!” Clint protested, then proceeded to do a horrifying rendition of Beyonce until Matt was wheezing with laughter on the floor, cold hardwood under his cheek doing nothing to dim his bright spirits. 

 

“Just put your outfit on, dumbass,” Matt said, trying and failing to suppress honest-to-god giggles. 

 

The sound of fabric behind him told him that Clint was following instructions, and he suited up quickly. He rolled his arms experimentally. “You good to go?”

 

“Try and keep up,” Clint said, an old joke; Matt was faster than him, and they both knew it. “Let’s go.”

 

They slipped through the window and began the run; Clint was in charge, as always, of watching the sky for irregularities while Matt kept an ear out for crime. 

 

“Going to snow tomorrow,” Matt said conversationally as he vaulted a poking-out bit of piping on the roof. “Barometric pressure is dropping.” He could feel it against his skin, taste the oncoming clouds.

 

“Oh no,” Clint said sarcastically. “I guess we’ll just have to stay in tomorrow night.”

 

Ordinarily, Matt would have protested, but the snow muffled everything- he couldn’t smell anything, hear anything, taste anything but cold water in the snow. “Not like criminals will want to be out in the snow.” He shut up so he didn’t bite his tongue off when he rolled on the next drop.

 

Clint hit the ground a second after he did, popping out of his roll. “Fair. Hear anything?” 

 

Matt cocked his head as he slowed from a sprint to a run. “Sirens. But they sound like they’ve got it covered.”

 

“Fair.”

 

He sped back up. “I’m gonna lead us back around towards the warehouse.”   
  


“Lead on, Captain Hell.”

 

He snorted. “That’s a new one.” Clint usually stuck to Double D, Lucy, or Hornhead while they were in costume. Sometimes he’d call him Spiderman Plus. Matt wondered if the Avengers knew Spiderman was a kid.

 

He paused at a larger street with heavy foot traffic. “Clint?”

 

The sound of an arrow firing answered him; Clint went first across the grapple arrow because he could see it, and Matt followed when he had an idea of where it was, using his billy club as his zip line. 

 

“Thanks.” He offered Clint a smile, shot behind him as they continued the run.

 

“Anytime.” 

 

For a moment, they were silent. Then, from somewhere to Matt’s left-

 

“ _ Daredevil! Help!” _

 

He veered left. In between wooing Clint, keeping his firm together, and staking out warehouses, he still did his best for street-level crimes, after all. They were vigilantes. That was what they did.

 

\-----

 

They returned to the apartment about three hours later, a little worse for wear but for the most part, doing pretty okay. Clint immediately collapsed on the couch.

 

“Never mind, too tired for bonus activities. I need a shower. With no bonus activities included.”

 

“Yeah, go for it. I can smell your sweat.”

 

“You could probably smell my sweat if I was a floor away,” Clint grumbled, but padded off to the bathroom anyway. 

 

Matt made himself busy in the kitchen, putting the milk for cocoa into the microwave and pulling out the mix they both liked, with all-natural cacao and the little crunchy marshmallows. He fluffed a blanket over the couch while the milk was heating up, and lit a candle. Then he knelt by the bookcase, running a finger over the movies Foggy’d labeled with a Braille labeler; he picked an animated movie he’d never seen as a kid (Beauty and the Beast, which Clint kept making references to that he never understood) and popped the disc in. Then he poured the hot milk over the cocoa mix and stirred it, adding whipped cream to the tops. 

 

The candle was scenting the whole room of vanilla and raspberry now, and Matt carried the cocoa back over to the table; he put them on coasters for the aesthetic, even though he knew there wasn’t condensation to make rings on the table. He was pretty sure the coasters had a Daredevil motif or something like that, because Karen was stifling laughter when he unwrapped them. 

 

He changed in his bedroom into some soft pajamas; part of Foggy’s “fuck you, Stick, he deserves all the soft things” campaign, and returned to the couch just as he heard Clint finish showering. “Hey, do you have some clothes I can borrow?” Clint called from the bathroom.

 

“Sure,” Matt responded, at a much louder volume than Clint, and retrieved another pair of Soft Pajamas™ for Clint. He delivered them to the bathroom, and waited in the warm bathroom while Clint changed. 

 

When they returned, he could hear Clint’s heart speed up. “Movie night?”

 

“I made cocoa. We need a night in, and it’s gonna be cold tomorrow,” Matt said, trying to pretend that he wasn’t desperately hoping for Clint’s approval on this.

 

“Now that you mention it, I could really go for some shitty giving-you-audio-description tonight. Is that  _ whipped cream? _ ”

 

Before Matt could reply, Clint was kissing him. “You’re the actual best,” he added after he had finished.

 

“Glad I could help,” Matt said amusedly. “Now drink your cocoa, you taste like spaghetti and it doesn’t taste good secondhand.”

 

They curled up together under the covers and Clint began his narration. It was cheesy, but sweet, and they were just getting to- “and then the Beast opens the door and holy shit, it’s this huge library, and Belle looks like she’s seen a million stars-”

 

“ _ It’s perfect.” _

 

_ “Then it’s yours,”  _ the exchange happened onscreen, and Clint added,

 

“He’s sweeping his arm dramatically across it, and Belle looks like she was just introduced to the secrets of spacetime and shit-” 

 

Matt didn’t hear the rest of it, because he was falling asleep against Clint’s leg, comfortable under the warm blanket, and his heartbeat was filling Matt’s ears. Hell’s Kitchen was safe for another night, and Clint was warm under his cheek, and the room smelled of chocolate and raspberry and vanilla, and the world, for once, was at peace.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we're done!
> 
> Thank you guys for sticking with me through this :) I've been thinking about making a Discord server, do y'all think that would be a good idea? I want to get to know some of y'all, because you leave the sweetest comments!

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to drop a comment and let me know what you think! It was really supposed to be a one-shot, but I had too many ideas and I'm not great at fast burn. So y'all get this I guess?


End file.
